Funny Money

Last month in New York City, a 16-year-old bank robber was dashing down the street clutching a bag of stolen cash when it suddenly exploded, spewing tear gas and splattering the young bandit with red dye. Within minutes the bleary-eyed and brightly marked teen-ager was apprehended. His stickup had been foiled by a tiny package that one bank manager calls "the state of the art in bank security systems."

The anticrime packet consists of an electronic detonator, a tear-gas canister and dye, all packed together so tightly that they fit inside the carved-out center of a stack of bills. Bank tellers keep the funny money in their cash drawers and slip it into a robber's bag along with the other loot. An electronic beam at the bank doors trips the detonator as the money is carried outside, and the hidden package explodes within 20 sec.

Most of the devices, which are used mainly by big-city banks and suburban ones that are frequently held up, are made by the'U.S. Currency Protection Corp. of Arizona and IRI Americas in Pennsylvania. The firms, though, are facing a rival system made by Scented Money Deterrent Co. of Atlanta. That device releases the odor of rotten eggs, leaving a pungent trail for police to follow.

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