Crooks and unsuspecting straphangers forked over 917 counterfeit bills — with a face value of $19,060 — to pay for MetroCards last year, according to the MTA.
In 2011, the agency took in a total of 975 phony notes, totaling $30,232.
Subway-booth clerks — who are hauled into hearings any time they accept illegal tender — aren’t laughing at the funny money.
In fact, their pay is being docked.
“It’s not fair,” said Janette Rivera, a clerk at the 103rd Street No. 6 train station. “Automatically, you’re guilty — and you have to prove yourself innocent.”
Rivera not only had to cough up money for a fake $100 bill that she had accepted but also was docked hours for the internal hearing that she had to attend.
And yet station clerks are required to accept $100 bills on any purchase of $70 or more and $50 bills on any purchase of $30 or more, according to a TWU Local 100 source.
“We’re damned if we do, and we’re damned if we don’t,” Rivera said.
Last year alone, clerks had to attend at least 671 such hearings, according to Paul Flores, TWU Local 100 vice chairman for station agents.
The problem, he said, is that the clerks are armed only with “corn starch” pens used to detect bogus bills in an age when counterfeiters are producing bills that can’t be detected that way.
“If you take a counterfeit and the customer walked away, then you lost anyway,” he said. “The only effective way is to catch it at the point of sale.”
Flores, who described the MTA counterfeit stat as a “low-ball” figure, suggests outfitting all 500 of the MTA’s subway booths with more sophisticated detection machines, which cost about $150 each.
That $75,000 investment would pay for itself by preventing counterfeits from getting through, he said.