Patent ID: 8437530

Claim:
A system for processing currency bills, the system comprising: an input receptacle configured to receive a stack of currency bills; an image scanning system configured to obtain image data that is reproducible as a visually-readable image of one or more portions of at least one side of each currency bill, the image scanning system configured to extract a serial number and at least one or more additional characters from the image data for the currency bill; a transport mechanism that transports each of the currency bills in the stack, one at a time, from the at input receptacle, past the image scanning system, to at least one output receptacle; a memory that stores serial number information and corresponding additional character information associated with serial numbers of genuine currency bills, the serial number information and corresponding additional character information uniquely identifying a genuine currency bill; a processor configured to compare the extracted serial number and corresponding extracted one or more additional characters with the stored serial number information and the corresponding additional character information associated with serial numbers of genuine currency bills, the processor, or another processor, further configured to identify as a suspect currency bill any currency bill from the stack with extracted serial numbers that do not have one or more extracted additional characters matching the serial number information and corresponding additional character information stored in the memory; and a display configured to display an image of at least a portion of the image data associated with the suspect currency bill and one or more of the extracted serial number, additional characters, or any combination thereof.