Ringing The Changes - Definition - Law Dictionary Home Dictionary Definition ringing-the-changes

Definition :

Ringing the changes, a trick practised by a criminal, by which, on receiving a good piece of money in payment of an article, he pretends it is not good, and, changing it, returns to the buyer a counterfeit one, as in Frank;s case, 2 Leach, 64:--A man having bargained with the prisoner, who was selling fruit about the street, to have five apricots for sixpence, gave him a good shilling to change. The prisoner put the shilling into his mouth, as if to test it by biting, and returning a shilling, said it was a bad one. The buyer gave him a second, which he treated like the first, and returned with the same words, and so with a third shilling. The shillings he returned being bad, this was an uttering of false money, 1 Russ. On Cr., 5th Edn. 231.

fraud consisting in offender's using a large banknote to pay for a small purchase; waiting for shopkeeper to put change on counter and then, by a series of maneuvers involving change of mind, Black's Law Dictionary, 7th Edn., p. 1327.