My friends and I are in an argument that it's illegal to destroy or deface money. I'm trying to get them to believe that it's not. I know it's not but I'm not sure why. I think is has to do with defrauding the government.
Anonymous
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No. You can light your cigar with a $100 bill if you want. You can cut away the background on an old silver dollar to make a pendant of an eagle if you want, too.
What you CAN'T do is to deface money with the intent to defraud; for instance, cut one corner off each of 4 $100 bills, paste those corners on a $1 bill and pass the resulting wad of five bills off as $500 to an unsuspecting target.
Ranger4402
It is not so much defraud as it is this.
It costs more than a penny to make a penny due to the price of the metals in the pennies. You can't melt down coins to extra their base metals and then sell that metal for cash. If everyone did that then the government would run up even more debt striking new coins.
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Since that "money " does not belong to you it is "defacing or destroying federal propert'y. See , That "money" id a promisary note. It entitles the bearer of the note to get whatever value of the note they hold. But!! we are not on the gold standard anymore, so, the "money" has become privatized. Now its is "legel tender to all departments both private and public". So, to answer your question, Yes that Tender belongs to the Federal Reserve and they are protected by the federal government. The answer is yes. It belongs to someone/somthing else.
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Yes,it is illegal to alter money for purposes explicit gain,such as counterfeiting,and various other methods for a profit.
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Burning paper, can't be illegal no matter what is printed on it, unless of course you are under a legal contract not to do it, and even then, it could still be done.