Making money whole again - When dollars get damaged, all is not lost

There's no magic cure for money lost in the stock market, but if the cash you buried in the backyard or stashed under your mattress gets damaged, there's help at hand.

The U.S. Treasury Department's Bureau of Engraving and Printing operates a Mutilated Currency Division where workers meticulously piece together millions of dollars of U.S. banknotes that are partially destroyed in floods, fires or other calamities.

"Any currency that is mutilated, it's been damaged in some way, it's been burned, buried, we've got specialists on board who undergo a six-year training period" to put the money back together, said Len Olijar, chief financial officer at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.

The department receives between $50 million and $70 million worth of mutilated money every year. Of that, technicians are able to reconstruct and redeem more than $30 million.

It's usually money people have put away for safekeeping. Often, it's been sitting untouched for years. That's part of the problem: People stash their cash in all the wrong ways.

Olijar and his technicians have seen . . .

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