Counterfeiting

COUNTERFEITING HAS two branches: the forging of coins and the forging of banknotes or bills. As the history of coins begins much earlier than the production of banknotes or bills, the forging of coins has a longer tradition dating at least back to antiquity. The forging of coins needs some special knowledge of metals and the ways of crafting such materials, whereas the counterfeiting of banknotes or bills necessitates know-how about paper production (including watermarks) and about several forms of printing.

Very early in both coin and banknote history, measures were taken by the legitimate issuers of such items to protect these precious objects against forgery and fakes. Coins often have special corrugation or coinage of the edge, which dates from the time when coins had a value not only defined by their denomination, but by the actual content of precious metal. By doing so, the issuers prevented the clipping by shaving or trimming of the coins. Paper money is even more difficult to protect. Special care was soon taken with the paper, the printing process, the watermarks, and in more recent time, with the holograph. A special identification tool for the issuer is the individual code given to every banknote.

But as the techniques employed by the issuers of coins and banknotes progress, so do the counterfeiting skills of the forgers. Also, the quality of counterfeits helps the forger to delay or to complicate[Page 224] its detection; the decisive factor is always the best way to get those counterfeits in circulation. The emergence of high quality laser printers and color photocopying machines has aggravated the problem of counterfeit banknotes of primitive or modest quality and large quantities. On the technical level there is a (sometimes overlapping) distinction between complete forgeries and falsifications, whereby the latter may signify that only a denomination of a real banknote was altered, or the raw materials and techniques of the legitimate production process of coins were illegally used to produce counterfeits.