Greece/Euro Country Illegally Printing its own stash of Euros

[Greg]

Disclaimer: I wouldn't do this, more of a thought exercise.

I was just thinking about this. If you were a country that was indebted and your populace then are hungry, etc. because of losing their jobs, austerity measures, etc. what if there was an easy solution to this?

If you could make a near Euro forgery through some means (getting a printing press, etc.) and then only giving the currency out to your friends, you could then purchase goods from other countries that have goods and services for sale. As long as you kept the numbers low, wouldn't it take a long time for higher ups to realize? At a micro-level, the trade between the small-time buyers and sellers wouldn't really come up on anyone's RADAR and as long as the Greece guy I'm trading with has Euros (and I think they are real), why not sell to him? I might technically be causing inflation (due to more dollars chasing same amount of Euro goods and services in a macro sense  but from the micro scale, I'm just on the gravy train to freeville.

Think it over and poke holes in my theory.

[Pointedstick]

A big problem with this is that is requires face-to-face cash transactions. The moment you deposit the forged notes at a bank, they can be tracked by their serial numbers and traced back to you.

That said, I think you're largely correct that cash forgeries are highly likely to go undetected. Everything is ones and zeroes nowadays!

I think there was actually a guy who successfully counterfeited $1 bills for decades. They only found him when his house caught fire and firefighters saw the dollar bill plates.

[Greg]

A big problem with this is that is requires face-to-face cash transactions. The moment you deposit the forged notes at a bank, they can be tracked by their serial numbers and traced back to you.

That said, I think you're largely correct that cash forgeries are highly likely to go undetected. Everything is ones and zeroes nowadays!

I think there was actually a guy who successfully counterfeited $1 bills for decades. They only found him when his house caught fire and firefighters saw the dollar bill plates.

I can't think why you'd want to counterfeit $1 bills. Seems like way to much of a hassle for so little money versus like $20s or higher denominations.

And true, you couldn't deposit the cash, but you might not care. You just need to be able to get to the market and give the guy a 5 or 10 euro note. That's a small enough currency value they probably wouldn't check it for forgery and only after he deposits it (unless he uses it to buy something himself) does he realize that he got swindled. Granted, he might not know who it was by though and he can't check every bill otherwise that would be far too much hassle.

The process then could possibly going on for quite a whiles before you get hosed.

[Greg]

A big problem with this is that is requires face-to-face cash transactions. The moment you deposit the forged notes at a bank, they can be tracked by their serial numbers and traced back to you.

That said, I think you're largely correct that cash forgeries are highly likely to go undetected. Everything is ones and zeroes nowadays!

I think there was actually a guy who successfully counterfeited $1 bills for decades. They only found him when his house caught fire and firefighters saw the dollar bill plates.

I can't think why you'd want to counterfeit $1 bills. Seems like way to much of a hassle for so little money versus like $20s or higher denominations.

And true, you couldn't deposit the cash, but you might not care. You just need to be able to get to the market and give the guy a 5 or 10 euro note. That's a small enough currency value they probably wouldn't check it for forgery and only after he deposits it (unless he uses it to buy something himself) does he realize that he got swindled. Granted, he might not know who it was by though and he can't check every bill otherwise that would be far too much hassle.

The process then could possibly going on for quite a whiles before you get hosed.

That's why the most counterfeited note in the US is a $20 bill. It strikes a nice balance between being worth the trouble in value to make, while still being small enough to be accepted without question in most transactions. Ever notice that those yellow pens they use at the cashier to detect frauds are only implemented on $50s and $100s?

Yerps. I used to work at a Walgreens for many years throughout high school and college and had to use either the pin or the ultraviolet lights to test bills. You'd normally ever only do it on the $50 and $100 just because otherwise it was too much hassle with all of the $20 you get.