MASTER FORGER CAUGHT

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 18785, 19 May 1923, Page 11

MASTER FORGER CAUGHT

£ND OF A FIVE YEARS’ HUNT BYDETECTIVES OF MANY NATIONS. FOUND AT WORK. SKILLED IN HIGH AND LOW ART. BERLIN, March 25. An International chase by secret police agents of several countries, who have been twelve months on the trail, has ended in Berlin, where a man, said to be one of the cleverest forgers of modern times, was run to earth yesterday. Detectives went to a house in the Halensee district occupied by a Russian painter and arrested him while he was at work engraving a plate for an American 100-dollar note. The man’s name Is Myasoedow. It is said that he is a distinguished Petrograd artist, who has received high honours from the Petrograd Academy for legitimate works of art. BAD £lO NOTES. It was discovered early last year that numbers of forged Bank of England £lO notes had been passed in Germany, France, Poland, and Russia. The forgeries were of such excellence that they deceived even experts. All that the detectives could establish was that the water-mark and the paper were Italian origin. Lately forged £2O notes have also made their appearance, and the hunt for the master forger was intensified Inquiries led the detectives to Berlin, and ultimately they succeeded in tracing the notes to the painter's house. £2,000,000 FORGERIES. It is possible that the Berlin arrest has a connection with the worldwide counterfeiting plot which led to a number of arrests in America in February. It was estimated then that the gang responsible for the bogus English and American notes which had been cashed in America and all over the Continent had printed forgeries of the face value of more than £2,000,000. More than 100 arrrests were made in America, and other arrests were made in France, Italy, Austria, Germany, and Cuba. It was stated in The daily Express then that the gang’s agents included manufacturers, retailers, and distributing agents, and numbered more than 1,000. Even after all these arrests the Identity of the master-mind behind the plot could not be traced, so deep was the secrecy with which all the operations of the gang were conducted.