Yella Beezy Trial Examines Limits Of $100 Bill Tracking

Yella Beezy‘s murder-for-hire trial heard testimony Wednesday from Federal Reserve director Joseph Catania about how newly printed $100 bills are tracked through the banking system.

Catania, who has worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York for 13 years, explained how shipping records document the initial distribution of new currency.

When banks order newly printed cash, the bills arrive in sequential order with unique 11-character serial numbers. Federal Reserve staff scan package barcodes to record the serial-number ranges, receiving bank and distribution date.

“For brand new currency, $100 bills, the Federal Reserve cash office that pays out that currency will keep a record of which bank that currency is to go to and what day and what year,” Catania testified. “When currency is brand new, it is in sequential numbered order. Each banknote contains an 11 character serial number of letters and numbers that should be unique to that note.”

Catania also explained a key limit: those records do not track individual bills after they enter the banking system or identify who holds them later.

Customers can withdraw the money, spend it and return it to circulation without the Federal Reserve recording each transaction.

“So, what we can do if you have a $100 bank note and it has a serial number, you provide us that serial number, we can tell you which bank that note got paid out to and when that note got paid out to that bank,” Catania said. “The limitation being we can’t track the bill and who it goes to, whose hand end user it ends up in, where it’s spent, how it’s used, anything like that.”

Prosecutors presented two $100 bills as evidence in the case. One bill, bearing serial number LF 8085 1614B, was traced to a Bank of America branch in Hialeah, Florida, where it was distributed in 2014.

The second bill, bearing serial number MK 69320001, was traced to One World Bank in Dallas, where it was distributed in June 2020.

Prosecutors allege Yella Beezy, whose legal name is Markies Conway, paid $40,000 to have Dallas rapper MO3, Melvin Noble Jr., killed on Interstate 35 in 2020. He has pleaded not guilty in the MO3 murder case.

The testimony outlined what the Federal Reserve’s records can establish about the bills and where that evidence stops.

Those records identify the banks that first received the new currency but cannot, on their own, establish who later handled it or how it was spent.