Euro Counterfeiters Open for Business

After six months of down time, Europe's counterfeiters appear to be active once again, according to annual figures released this week by the European Central Bank.

In a short report documenting counterfeiting in the 12 countries that use the euro, the Frankfurt-based bank reported that a total of 145,153 counterfeit notes were removed from circulation in the second half of 2002. The number marked a dramatic jump from the 21,965 notes seized in the first half of last year.

"It takes awhile," ECB spokesman Jean Rodriguez said of the jump. "During the first half we had an extremely low number of notes confiscated."

The bank concluded that an active media campaign and hidden security features in the new currency discouraged potential counterfeiters. Around 8.2 billion euro notes were in circulation last year.

The euro's creators went out of their way to include a series of security marks on the new currency, which went into circulation on Jan. 1, 2002.

Invisible watermarks, holograms and a silver foil running down one side of the bills were considered top line security measures against fraud.

To that the ECB added a massive media campaign that kept retailers and shoppers on the lookout for fake bills. But as that campaign slackened, counterfeiters became bolder.

"There are many who waited because they feared with the very public introduction of the euro that too many people would be paying attention," Ute Kadow, head of the anti-counterfeiting unit at the Berlin State Office of Criminal Investigation. "But now, people pay as little attention to it as they did the d-mark. The less people pay attention, the easier it will be for (the criminals) to work."

Eastern European gangs have big market

By far the most popular bill among counterfeiters has been the €50 note, which comprised almost 84 percent of all seizures, according to ECB figures. Investigators seized more than 8,000 of those bills in Germany alone, making up the majority of the 13,698 counterfeit bills acquired by German police.

Investigators believe the majority of counterfeit notes are being produced in the same former Eastern bloc countries that were producing fake copies of Europe's national countries before the euro's introduction. In the around 800 cases investigated by police in EU countries, there have been 500 arrests, according to year-end statistics by the Europe-wide police organization Europol.

In September, police in Bonn found a train locker full of counterfeit Euro bills stored there by a Hungarian man. The €8,500 euro was among the biggest in Germany so far.

Getting at the structure behind the suspects will be more difficult, said Kadow. The organizations behind the fraud are highly organized with the printing presses and know-how needed to pull off a good fake.

"The culprits don't just sit around," she said in a DW-WORLD interview. "They are very inventive and with the euro they have a bigger field. You can use the euro almost anywhere."

But most frauds remain the work of single counterfeiters, making crude copies on scanners of digital copy machines that are easily discovered through the "look-feel-tilt" method advocated by the ECB. Though the bank expects a slight increase in the amount of notes seized over the coming year, they are optimistic the black market won't be awash any time soon.

"It's fairly probable that the amounts, based on the trends we have seen in the second half of the year, will increase," said the ECB's Rodriguez. "But it will be an increase in quantity, and a low increase in the quality."