LONDON SENSATION.

Hawera Star, Volume XLVIII, 19 December 1924, Page 3

LONDON SENSATION.

\ FORGED NOTES DISCOVERY. CLEVEREST Of”ALL IMITATIONS. LONDON. Nov. 1. Police and banks all over the country are making strenuous efforts to discover the source of forged Treasurj nates, printed with such a perfect finish a? to defy the greatest expertsFor some tin> e thousands of forged £4 and ids currency notes have been in circulation, and of. these many hundreds were seized as a,result of a raid at Greenwich a week or two ago. These notes, however, are not to be compared with the latest- series of forged, notes wliich are now being passed in, different parts of the country. The notes seized at Greenwich, and also others produced from the same plates, were tolerably good copies of genuine ones, and although their faults were obvious to hank clerks and others wlio cared to scrutinise them, they were sufficiently deceptive to pass unchallenged in a poor light or in a batch of other notes.

The latest specimens of the forgers art, however, show a surprising improvement on the Greenwich notes. They are clearly printed on crisp paper in wliich the Treasury water mark has been faithfully reproduced, the colouring is true, and there is no preceptible blurring, which so frequently exposes a forged note. Indeed, a bank official who lias had an opportunity of -seeing several of these notes stated that he had never seen such wonderful imitations. A\ r lien the present Treasury notes were issued it was claimed that they could not be forged. The design was adopted because, in 1915 the old notes were forged by a gang who were sentenced to long ternis of penal servitude at the Old Bailey. * , AA'hen the shop where the notes were printed-■ was raided by Scotland Yard detectives, one "of the men was caught busily printing the forged notes, and there was found on the premises paper sufficient to print many hundreds of thousands. Notes of a new design were at once put into circulation' hut the hope then expressed that they would defy the forgers’ efforts has now been falsified. The forged notes have been received without any question by banks and tradesmen in warm parts of the country. : The fact that they were in circulation was nof discovered until some of them were sent in process of time to the Bank of England- • AVhen notes reach the bank they are destroyed, and their numbers registered, and it was because notes with similar numbers to these arrived at the bank that the plot was disclosed. No two genuine notes, of course, have duplicate numbers. Detectives employed by the Bank of England and Somerset House have received reports from the highest, experts in the country who have found certain clues in the forged notes which, it is believed, will result in the printlevs being traced and the whole gang I arrested. - ‘ Meanwhile it is stated that the aujthorities are seriously considering the 'issue of Treasury notes of an entirely j different design.