QXE faked Journey's 20$ note

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I got this morning this very nice phony 20$ note from a Caisse Populaire's ATM.  I caught immediately my attention by it's prefix and serial number:  QXE2046871

This note have a convincing holographic strip, just too much metallic looking (as aluminum paper), but the iridescent effect is quite good. (See scan of the front below).  I tried to get the maximum resolution from the scan and have the best compression to respect the limit of 100k attached file.  Hope that the note will look well enough.
This note was printed with a good quality injet printer and moreover, had a pass of a laser printer to print the large counters.  That one on upper left was printed over the holographic strip, like on an authentic note.
The watermark is absent.
Both parts (back and front) of the see-thourgh "20" are superposing almost perfectly.
The smallest fine print on the frontaren't readable, but the quotation on the back in quite clear.  The maple leaves in the big counter aren't clear and we see no traces of the smallest white "20" printed between the maple leaves.  The fines lines in the yellow strip are blurred together.
The font of the serial number is a bit smaller than the original and a bit more spaced, but overall quite decent.
The color of the front is a green slightly more yellow than an authentic note. On the back, the green tint is a bit darker, but the purple strip is almost violet.  
The security thread is metallic green instead the normal yellow-green.  When looked through, this strip is dashed instead being continous.  The prints "CAN 20" are not clear and are incomplete.
The paper is quite heavy (more than the usual "printer-quality" paper).  The faked note have not the fluorescent markings and the entire note have the strong blue fluorescence from the usual ultra-white paper for photos or a paper alike.

No doubt that this note was made by a professionnal (probably by a criminal gang) who put a lot of time and efforts to get this quality of faked note.

This note can probably ranks as one of the best looking faked note in the Journey's serie.  I was wondering when a professionnal-quality note woud be find in circulation.  I had my answer:  it took about one year to emerge.  However, this note is far from being perfect and lacks of two of the most difficultly-faked security characteristics:  the security thread and the watermark.  So, look through your notes, not only on them...

Here the scan of the back.  Just a correction, I found this note yesterday morning.  For some reason, I wasn't able to put a post yesterday, but today, it works fine...

Serial numbers are a different font too it looks like.
What did you notice about the FP and BP numbers - were they really blurry?  
Also, the serif on the 1 looks way too short.

The front and back plate numbers are a bit blurry but still readable, BPN is 93 and FPN is 98.  The font are thinner than the authentic ones and the form of the "2" is different.  The "7" is straight instead being curved.  Each digit is different, and the prefix is completely fancyful, but only to us, crack of banknotes!  The average Joe doesn't see any obvious difference....

But I thought that the new ATM that were installed in many Caisses Populaires in my region were able to detect and automatically withdraw any phony note, but it's not the case.  And on second thought, it's normal:  it's the Caisse who would pay for the phony notes.  It's "bettter" to let them to the consumers, and leave to them the charge to get remboursed at their bank or caisse populaire (if they are willing to)...

Wow copperpete, I've been waiting to see one of these too. They're going to do better on the holographic strip sooner or later. The holograms I've seen on counterfeit Euros are basically indistinguishable from the real ones. It took them about 2 years to reach that point.

Also, I'm surprised it had no watermark. Even mid-grade Euro fakes have something like a watermark, it's printed on, it's invisible in plain view, but visible when held up to the light.

Also, on a fake 200 Euro note I have, the flouresence is also imitated perfectly. All the complex patterns were done in the right colours and such. I got the note in June 2004 from a bank teller in the Netherlands who came accross it. It only took 2 1/2 years to perfect a fake 200 Euro note (of course missing intaglio, done by offset, but embossing was there to imitate intaglio). I suspect it was from Eastern Europe. It had the perfect hologram, a good watermark, and even the colour shifting ink at the back, along with a good thread.

Hi:

I got caught with a phony $10 journey - 2001 - (which I turned into the bank) and the serial number fonts are extremely close if not identical. Also, the prefix of my phony was JVX and this ones QXE. You think the perpetrator uses X so that he/she knows his/her own work?

CopperPete: How was the intaligo printing? Was there any sort of texture to the large and small "20"'s and the Bank of Canada/Banque du Canada?

John

Yup. They will use an invalid prefix so they know its a fake or because they dont know jack about prefixes.

Hi,

No there was no intaglio printing, no feeling around the large "20" counter.  But these had a lustrous look (as laser printed, I'm not sure about).  Maybe there was one pass in a inkjet printer and one pass for the "itaglio" printing.  But this requires a lot of work to do...

And about the fancy prefixes, I think these notes are made by some criminal gang who deal with a lot of cash, so they can use it as a kind of marker (the very different prefix) to sort out their own phony notes when they are paid in cash for all illicit transactions (prostitution, drugs, money laundering, etc.).