Who falsifies money?

• Poor people who falsify money in a naive hope of improvement of their material situation. They work mostly individually. (This kind of situation was typical of some countries, for example, Austria, in the 19th century. From that time many primitive, hand-drawn counterfeits have been preserved until today. Most of them reflect the illiteracy of their producer and/or calculations that such forgeries might be successfully distributed among people of a similar education level..) They are produced in small numbers and are usually quickly discovered. Recently, this group was considerably enlarged by the owners of commercially available information technology who make easily recognizable counterfeits by means of scanners and ink or laser color printers. Their counterfeits are mostly produced to very poor quality. However, the quick lifestyle, stress at cash desks, different street kiosks, badly illuminated pubs are places where surprisingly primitively counterfeits or altered banknotes are accepted even today. The economic impact of this group is mostly negligible.




• People relatively well skilled in printing techniques. They produce fair or good counterfeits. They work singly or collaborate with small, often poorly organized groups of distributors. This category of counterfeiters also includes some people who were able to master the many special skills necessary for money production. They equipped their workshops with remarkably sophisticated self-made devices and elaborated an intricate way of safely distributing their own products. Their discovery took several years. However, such "genial" personalities appear in a country once in a while.




• Well organized criminals working often on the international level. Their counterfeiting activity is often bound with other criminal activities. They have large financial backing and are equipped with relatively good technical equipment. They use a wide conspiratorial network of distributors, while they stay in the background. Their discovery is difficult and tedious.

Out of these groups, politically motivated counterfeiting remains. Counterfeiting reason was a simple attempt to damage the economy hostile country. In this case, it was produced by a large number of counterfeits that have infiltrated into the opponent's economy and cause him to inflation of the currency.

In Napoleonic expansion period, the first great waves of politically motivated paper money counterfeiting also occurred - England counterfeited the French money while France - the Austrian and Russian money.

During World War 2 period Germans managed to produce counterfeit pounds worth 600 million dollars.

Counterfeits can also serve as ideological leaflets. For example 1 crown banknote with anti-communist slogans that appeared in Czechoslovakia in 1953, banknotes the White Russian army with anti-Bolshevik texts during the civil war in Russia in the years 1918-20 or of the recent past American counterfeits of Iraqi dinars with inscriptions against Saddam from the early 90s of the 20th century. However, historically, it was a little effective in spite of the almost perfect quality of counterfeits.

Source: The Security Features Guide