Retailers and consumers first line of defence against counterfeiting

It's not easy. Despite your best efforts, chances are you have unwittingly received and then passed on counterfeits since there are upwards of 500,000 bogus bills floating around Canada right now (see Part One on Counterfeiting in Canada ).

Most Canadians believe if they stay away from $100 and $50 dollar bills, they won't get stuck with phony money. Yet the majority of fake currency these days come in $20 and $10 denominations, according to the Bank of Canada.

One reason? Most Canadian retailers flat out reject $100s and $50s, or use UV filters to check out if big bills are genuine.

Another reason? The combination of high quality scanning and low cost printing has made it profitable to counterfeit even $20s and $10s, while reducing the risk of getting caught since few stores or consumers closely check these bills.

Fortunately, the business owners and shoppers that do pay attention to the quality of their cash have been instrumental in busting several counterfeit rings across Canada.

In fact, just halfway through this month alone (February, 2007), police in British Columbia have busted five forgery gangs, each capable of producing thousands of fraudulent notes.

Bad case of indigestion 

For instance in B.C. on Feb. 5, a bogus $100 bill passed by a Langley man and Hope woman for breakfast in Cache Creek, led RCMP to a counterfeiting operation near Chilliwack.

A waitress at the Nag Stop Café on the Transcanada Highway called police after she determined the money used to pay for the meal was phony. When officers caught up with the pair of forgers, they discovered another 48 more counterfeit $100 bills.

The subsequent interrogation by Ashcroft RCMP led directly to a counterfeiting factory in a Chilliwack home, where investigators uncovered a cache of laptops, printers, scanners, gold foil and partially completed $100 bills. The illegal money manufacturer had large-scale capacity to print phony bank notes.

"It takes a certain level of high-tech competence and sophistication to be able to replicate Canadian currency," said Sgt. Mary Kostashuk, an expert on counterfeiting with the Commercial Crime Section of the RCMP's "E" Division.

RCMP added that the Chilliwack counterfeit ring was linked to other operations in Western Canada. Officers from different detachments and sections created a task force after fake $50 and $100 bills turned up in all four western provinces - BC, Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

The Chilliwack case is just one of four counterfeit factories uncovered by RCMP in communities around BC.
This week, a Burnaby man was busted with $140,000 in counterfeit currency. He and the other counterfeit rings were generally copying older Canadian currency, which has less security features.

"We started seeing the Birds of Canada series [$20 bills] last fall and the Canadian Journey notes [$100 denomination] we started to see in November going through the financial institutions," said Kostashuk.

Bank of Canada official Manuel Parreira said the notes were only of "average quality" and would not fool anyone trained to spot the difference between a counterfeit and the real thing.

Kostashuk said the notes would never get past cashiers, bank tellers, casino employees or anyone else who routinely handle cash.

Parreira said it was not difficult for merchants and shoppers to see which notes were counterfeit since features are built into real notes to prevent the public from being victimized.

"People are just looking at the colour or the image but they have to look for the features built into the notes," he said.

In part three of this series, I offer tips from the experts on spotting counterfeit money so that you're not hosed and the criminals get caught.