FORGED £5 NOTES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14223, 20 November 1909, Page 2 (Supplement)

FORGED £5 NOTES.

FRAUDS ON RUSSIAN " BANK.

THIEVES' £3000 COUP. A, great quantity of * forged English; banknotes— £5 notes—has been discover-, ed in Moscow. The International Bank alone hag lost about £3000 by the forgeries.

The notes are so cleverly forged that only experts are able to distinguish the counterfeit from the genuine. . r . The bank cashiers remember having bought the forged notes- from"' two welldressed men, one of whom was English and, said he came from London. The police are searching everywhere for these men. There are indications that a considerable number, of forged Bank of England> £5notes are in circulation in Russia. Forged notes have been recently presented at the Bank of England, through the London offices of; Russian banks situated in all parts of that country. An official of the Bank of England stated that the forgeries are' not of J a very skilful nature.

; The most perfect recent imitation notes —notes which deceived even officials at the Bank of England—were made by a man who came to England from Rueeia. This man has recently undergone imprisonment in a foreign country, but it is thought ,that he is now back in his native land. The last great forgery of Bank of England notes was effected by the Barmash gang, who circulated bogus notes of the face value of £23,000 and were captured in December, 1902. ■ -

The younger Barmash, after his release from prison, proffered the following advice to the Bank of England :

"The old-fashioned way of printing banknotes in- dull, single colour should," he said, " be changed and the not*>s printed in many different colours. This would prove too difficult Ito imitate, and forgery would cease to pay and thus stop. v

'," Even the much-vaunted secretly prepared water-marked paper on which banknotes are printed can be copied to deceive an expert, and secret marks, of which we hear so much, are now known to the public and the majority of bank cashiers. Rainbow colour printing is the only real remedy." ~ ;. *

Besides the watermark and the quality of the paper (which itself is a secret) a, safeguard relied on by the Bank of England is the ■ quality of the print. The "ticks" in certain letters are well known and not difficult to imitate, but no forger has ever been able to obtain the perfect, heavy black printing of the lettering and at the same time get the beautiful distinction of the horizon between sea and sky on the vignette on the left side of ' the note. The. best test of a Bank of England note is in the centre of the vignette. /'•■'.;