The Bulk Currency Detection System (BCDS) likes that new money smell.
U.S. border patrol guards will use the new device to sniff out large wads of cash moving illegally across the Mexican border. KWJ Engineering made the announcement about its new detection system at the American Chemical Society meeting this week in San Francisco.
The device can take a small sample of gas from any storage item an officer finds suspicious. More than $30 billion of U.S. currency illicitly flows south of the border every year hidden in clothing, luggage, vehicles and other storage containers.
"Money sniffing is an unknown art. No one had ever tried to find these aromas," said Joseph Stetter of KWJ Engineering. "We found that U.S. currency emits a wide range of volatile organic compounds that make a 'fingerprint' we can identify in less than a minute."
The BCDS is a handheld detector, described as a small portable wand, to supplement the job already done by dogs and airport-style X-ray scanners at checkpoints, according to BBC News. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security made a public challenge in 2011 for scientists to develop a quicker and easier solution to sniff out the smuggled cash, much of it laundered drug money.
"It isn't just currency moving through an airport, a body scanner will pick that up. The bigger problem is at border crossings," Paul Burgess, the chief executive of Lattice Inc. told Homeland Security News Wire in 2011. DHS gave his company $100,000 three years ago to develop similar technology. "You can put money in a side door, and it's going to be very difficult to detect," he said.
The new device faces several challenges. The BCDS will have to differentiate between the average wad of bills (travelers don't have to claim cash less than $10,000) or the hundreds of thousand smuggled over the border, according to Newsweek. A trial period for the device won't begin for another two to three years.
"It's quite a challenge to get the sensors and the sampling system and the algorithm that's going to interpret the data all working together seamlessly in a real world environment," Stetter said.
His goal is to have the device used by other law enforcement agencies to track down meth labs and other "illicit operations of any kind."
