Watch out for counterfeit banknotes. This is the message launched by the police on Friday January 21, because criminal groups are selling tens or even hundreds of thousands of euros in counterfeit notes, stamped “Disney” or “Poker”, for example. They are the same size and color as real banknotes but the difference is obvious at a glance. “For example, you have a banknote of 500 euros stamped ‘Disneyland’. We are therefore on a reproduction with a rather whimsical inscription”, details Commissioner William Hippert, head of the organized crime analysis service. Other banknotes have inscriptions in Chinese signs. “We’re talking about facsimiles.” These counterfeit banknotes can be bought in a few clicks on the Internet.
The target of these scammers: individuals looking to sell luxury goods in cash. They therefore focus on juicy transactions. In the Paris region, for example, they scammed a private individual who thought he had sold small gold bars for more than 60,000 euros: he actually ended up with bundles of false notes.
“Everything is based on persuasion. We talk business, we are in large Parisian palaces or we rent meeting rooms… We put smoke in our eyes to put the victim in confidence.”
William Hippert, Head of Organized Crime Analysisat franceinfo
The crooks take care of the scam until they show real banknotes, when the victim is confident, to create even more illusions. “Several individuals try to put the victim to sleep by showing him the real tickets and explaining the terms of the transaction, details William Hippert. Then, we draw the victim’s attention to something else and, in the end, we give counterfeit tickets. The modus operandi is sometimes worthy of a movie: “We have had cases where accomplices were hidden in a piece of furniture and changed the suitcase of real banknotes, which had initially been shown to the victim, with a suitcase filled with facsimiles.” These groups are, according to the police, often from the Balkans.
Fraudsters have two advantages: first, the victim only notices the scam later; then sellers will rarely file a complaint. Indeed, with their briefcase of counterfeit notes on their arms, it is difficult to push the door of the police station, for tax reasons. “Scammers often use the lure of profit. When you want to make transactions with the objective of not declaring the entire sum, you obviously have to expect to attract this type of scammer.“These transactions can sometimes reach a million euros in false notes, when it comes to luxury real estate.
These same counterfeit bills are also found in the drug world, to scam each other between traffickers. Proof of the extent of the circulation of these counterfeit banknotes: in November, customs officers at the Modane border post (Haute-Savoie), on the border with Italy, discovered one million euros in facsimile banknotes of 200 euro. In 2021, 2,000 banknotes of this type were handed over to the Banque de France. This figure is probably underestimated.