'Unforgeable' Australian bank notes under attack from counterfeiters

[malj1]

February 4 2018 - 12:15AM

'Unforgeable' Australian bank notes under attack from counterfeiters

    Mario Christodoulou

They were once described as unforgeable, but these days Australia's polymer notes are under attack. Counterfeiters are using cheap printing technology to make notes so good they can fool the banks and courts.

This year marks 30 years since the introduction of the first polymer bill. And in those three decades Australia has enjoyed low and falling forgery rates.


One of the fake 50-dollar notes.

But recently the forgers have been clawing back those gains and today Australia is one of only four countries where counterfeiting rates are increasing.

Read more here

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One of the rules of predicting the future is don't predict the future. One of the rules of being an official is not to repeat mistakes. All over the world, governments have been struggling against fraud with banknotes and identity papers. They have learned that all progress on their side is temporary, until the criminals catch up, as they will. To proclaim a banknote "unforgeable" breaks both rules, making the speaker unspeakably stupid.

Unless it was a politician.

Peter