If a citizen flies on a flight within his own country, he is allowed to bring any amount of money on board the plane. If abroad - then no more than 10 thousand dollars per person without a declaration. Amounts exceeding $ 10,000 are required to be declared. But each foreign country has its own rules: in some countries you can bring a much smaller amount per person, in others - a much larger one.
Airport security services
As a result, there are individuals who come up with all sorts of tricks to hide cash from security services at airports. Employees of the passenger control and screening services claim that all this is useless. Modern means of control and examination make it possible to find money in luggage as easily as other items. Professionals in their field can even roughly name the amount that this or that passenger carries with him.
Baggage inspection scanners
Control and inspection services at airports are equipped with metal detectors and X-ray scanners (introscopes). The metal detector is designed to detect weapons prohibited for carriage: firearms, cold, traumatic, etc. The introscope creates a three-dimensional image of the scanned baggage or person.
X-ray machines are based on one of two principles of operation. The first is to bounce X-rays off objects. Moreover, depending on the density of the object, it will be visible in its color in the picture. To reliably scan a person or object, you only need to take 2 pictures: from one side and the other, or from the front and back. At the same time, bundles of money and individual slips of money will be visible as rectangles with a certain size and thickness, which immediately arouses suspicion in an experienced security officer.
The second principle of operation of the introscope is the volumetric radiation of X-ray waves of the millimeter range, penetrating through any obstacles. This radiation is created by two rotating antennas and thanks to diffraction scattering, a projection of the internal structure of the object is obtained, without violating its integrity and preventing personal inspection.
Thus, a realistic picture of all items of baggage appears on the scanner screen, a clear and detailed image of everything that is under the traveler's clothes. The linear accelerator, which is equipped with any modern introscope, allows radiation to pass even through very dense objects, which allows the operator to display a very high quality image.
Objects made of organic materials on the introscope screen are colored orange, inorganic - blue, intermediate - green. The brightness of the color depends on the density of the object: the brighter the color, the denser the object. In this case, banknotes are easily detected, even if they are rolled into a tube or hidden inside another object.
There is also a third type of introscopes - scanners based on computed tomography technology. They appeared in 2010 and are increasingly used in airport and train station security systems. Such introscopes scan luggage layer by layer and allow not only to examine internal objects from different angles of view, but also to find out the internal composition of each object in the suitcase.
It is thanks to such an introscope that the customs officer recognizes that the investigated bundle of papers not only fits banknotes in size, but is also made up of paper sheets. Thus, in front of him is a bundle of money. By the characteristic size of the banknotes, one can guess what currency is carried by the passenger and approximately recalculate the number of banknotes.
Installations with a power of more than 5000 meV even make it possible to identify objects by their atomic number. Only scanning a person at this power is prohibited, so they are used to check objects with thick metal walls.
Personal scanners
Body search scanners are based on the same principles as introscopes. Penetrating X-rays pass through clothing and the human body and are then captured by detectors. Such scanners easily detect all objects hidden under clothing and inside a person. For example, in the stomach or in cavities. Typically, these scanners are used to find weapons or drugs from drug couriers, but they can also detect hidden wads of money.
Consequences of finding money
If the undeclared funds found in the baggage or in the passenger's possession exceed the amount of 10 thousand dollars per person, he faces an administrative fine in the amount of 1 to 2, 5 thousand rubles. At the same time, money exceeding the amount of 10 thousand will be confiscated in favor of the state.
If the amount exceeds $ 10,000 many times, they are seized with the preparation of an appropriate protocol, with the involvement of employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and subsequent criminal liability. The penalty is a fine of 10 to 15 times the amount brought in.
