Ten Most Famous Counterfeiting Scandals

By: Astrid Mitchell

The crime of counterfeiting is probably as old as money itself,
and kings have often dealt very harshly with its perpetrators.
The counterfeiting of coins or 'coining' used to be dealt with
as a form of treason. As a result, gruesome punishments for
coining in England have included being hung drawn and quartered
and being burnt at the stake. In America, counterfeiting also
used to be punishable by death. Bank notes printed by Benjamin
Franklin often bore the phrase 'to counterfeit is death.'
Bearing in mind that counterfeiting requires a great deal of
audacity, here are the 10 most famous counterfeiting scandals
throughout history, in chronological order.

1 Mary Butterworth was a counterfeiter in colonial America. She
started her counterfeiting operation in 1716 and organised it
into a cottage industry, sternly overseeing the work of the
entire family. Authorities became suspicious of Butterworth when
they noticed unexpected changes in the colonial economy and,
amidst a flurry of rumours about the family, her husband John
purchased an expensive new home.

2 The unfortunate Georgian counterfeiter Catherine Murphy was
convicted of coining in 1789 and was the last woman to suffer
execution by burning in England. Her co-defendants, including
her husband, were executed at the same time by hanging, but as a
woman the law provided that she should be burnt at the stake.
Burning as a method of execution was abolished the following
year.

3 At the start of the American Civil War Samuel C. Upham began
marketing patriotic items to support the Union, and novelty
items mocking the Confederacy. In February 1862 he acquired a
Confederate bank note and quickly started producing novelty
counterfeit notes. But cotton smugglers in the south quickly
began buying up the bogus bills and flooding the Confederate
economy with them. Since his death many of Upham's counterfeit
items have become valuable collector's items.

4 Stephen Jory - Often described as a 'lovable rogue', is Great
Britain's most renowned counterfeiter. Born in Hackney in 1949
and brought up in north London, Jory left his grammar school and
entered the criminal fraternity, he said, through his 'own
choice'. Jory started off selling cheap perfume in designer
bottles and later established his own illegal printing
operation, producing and distributing an estimated five billion
pounds in counterfeit money throughout the United Kingdom. His
counterfeit notes were so convincing that they fooled UV
counterfeit detectors. Jory died on May 5 2006.

5 During World War II, the Nazis forced Jewish artists in the
Sachsenhausen concentration camp to forge British pounds and
American dollars. The quality of the counterfeiting was very
good, but the Germans could not put their plan into action and
were forced to dump the bills into a lake.

6 Frank William Abagnale Jr worked under 8 identities during the
1960s, including his first as Pan American Airlines Pilot Frank
Williams, in over 5 years, passing over $2.5 million in
counterfeit cheques in over 26 countries and all 50 states. He
was arrested in France at an Air France ticket counter when an
agent recognized his face from a wanted poster. In the movie
based on his life, 'Catch Me if You Can', Abagnale made a cameo
appearance as a French policeman.

7 Anatasios Arnaouti is a criminal from Manchester who led one
of the most ambitious forgery operations in history before he
and his accomplices were jailed in 2005. The total amount of
counterfeit money they produced is unknown as their printing
operation had been in production for several years, and was
capable of producing tens of thousands of counterfeit notes each
day. The extent of the crime was considered so severe that it
could have compromised the UK and US economies.

8 In 2004, French police seized fake 10 euro and 20 euro
counterfeit bank notes worth a total of around �1.8 million from
two laboratories and estimated that 145,000 counterfeit notes
had already entered circulation.

9 In 2006, a Pakistani government printing press in the city of
Quetta was accused of churning out large quantities of
counterfeit Indian bank notes. The Times of India reported this
scandal, based on Central Bureau of Intelligence investigation.
The money was allegedly used to fund terrorist activities inside
India, the recent blasts in Mumbai being funded using this fake
currency.

10 Today the finest counterfeit notes are claimed to be US
dollar bills produced in North Korea, called 'Superdollars'
because of their high quality. The US government believes they
have been circulating since the late 1980s and that they serve
two purposes: as a source of income and to undermine the US
economy.

Article Source: http://collectibles-articles.com

Astrid Mitchell is the executive editor at Reconnaissance International, the leading global source of business intelligence on brand protection, holography, authentication, authentication for document security and personal identification.

Print This Article

Post Comment

Add To Favorites

Email to Friends

Publisher Ready