You Cannot Counterfeit Gold
CanWest News Service

Counterfeiting incidents reported to police in B.C. last year nearly doubled over the previous year.

Nationwide, the making of funny money shot up 72 per cent last year to 138,000 incidents, making it the sixth most common crime in Canada. And the increase was widespread, tripling in Newfoundland, nearly doubling in Ontario and Quebec, and increasing in all provinces except P.E.I.

Merchants, many of whom won't accept $100 or even $50 notes, should also be looking closely before accepting $20 bills, new Bank of Canada figures suggest. And so should everyone else.

The flood of counterfeit bills in circulation early this year -- with a face value of nearly $4 million -- hit record levels in 2003 and has surged this year, led by a tidal wave of phoney $20 notes.

The figures underscore a report yesterday from Statistics Canada that the increase in counterfeiting last year fuelled the first rise in the crime rate in Canada in a decade.

"We had over $13 million in counterfeit notes passed successfully in this country [in 2003]," notes RCMP Sgt. Moshe Gordon, adding that's a "dramatic increase" from $4.9 million in 2002.

The increase, despite improved security features on the notes, is blamed by the RCMP on better and more affordable computer and image-reproduction technology.

"The technology that's available to the bad guys . . . has made counterfeiting a lot easier," he says.

The Bank of Canada reports that a record 160,313 counterfeit notes surfaced during the first three months of this year, far more than the previous high of 129,799 in the final quarter of last year.

Police, the central bank, and even retail industry spokespersons say that if people know what to check -- and do check -- the vast majority of counterfeit notes can be detected easily and quickly.

However, counterfeiters have been cranking out a lot more of the smaller denomination $20 notes, which are less likely to be scrutinized.

That latest surge in counterfeit bills includes 111,586 phoney $20s, up from the previous record 74,617 in the final quarter of last year.

The surge in counterfeit $20 notes more than offset a decline in counterfeit $100 and $50 notes to boost the total face value of counterfeits that surfaced from January through March to a record $3.99 million. That's up from the previous quarterly high of $3.6 million in the final quarter of 2003 when record numbers of phoney $100, $50, $20, $10 and even $5 notes were in circulation.

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HOW TO CHECK BANK NOTES

Instructions on checking for counterfeit bills are available on the central bank's website at www.bankofcanada.ca/en/banknotes/counterfeit.

On the new $100 note, for example, there are four anti-counterfeiting features, which can be easily and quickly checked, it says. They include:

- A holographic stripe on the front of the note that turns colours when tilted.

- A watermark ghostlike portrait of Sir Robert Borden in the centre of the note, which is visible from both sides when the note is held up to the light.

- A stripe that runs down the side of the note, which appears as a dashed line but that becomes solid when it is held up to the light and that also turns from gold to green when tilted.