Security strips used on bogus bills
Police find counterfeiters using holographic stripes from real banknotes
CanWest News Service
Published: Thursday, August 09, 2007
CALGARY - Some counterfeiters are adopting a technique called peel- and-paste to overcome high-tech holographic security features on Canadian currency, police say.
They are stripping the holographic stripes from genuine Canadian $5, $10 and $20 notes and gluing them onto phoney $20, $50 and $100 notes, according to the RCMP.
Most of the bogus notes are appearing in Alberta, but phoney notes have also shown their counterfeit faces in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec.
The criminals have even tried to return the real notes from which they have removed the stripes to banks, to demand replacement bills.
"Someone's always going to try something and it was a matter of time," said Sgt. Kerry Petryshyn, the RCMP's Ottawa-based national counterfeit coordinator.
RCMP issued an alert in July after noticing a spike in use of the "altered counterfeit" technique, a relatively uncommon one.
Police know of about 450 altered notes distributed across Canada since 2005.
Of the 67 altered notes discovered this year, 45 came in July, and 85 per cent of those were passed in Edmonton and Calgary.
Police have made no arrests so far but they believe the notes came from a single source, either one person or an organized crime group.
The phoney currency is poor-quality, run off an ink-jet printer on cheap paper. The colours look off and they'll run at the first drop of water.
Petryshyn said criminals are exploiting people's tendency to rely too much on one security feature, the holographic stripe.
"What's unique about it is it's costly and time-consuming," he said.
"For a $50 counterfeit, they're sacrificing a $5 note, plus whatever other expenses they have for inks and printing."
© The Vancouver Sun 2007
