A gang of counterfeiters who counterfeited Russian rubles was detained in Dagestan. Cliches, a press-machine and printer cartridges were confiscated. The flows of fakes inside the country come mainly from the North Caucasus, and the bulk is made abroad, experts said. Modern technology allows fraudsters to counterfeit equipment for the production of high-quality banknotes. The victims are mostly elderly and visually impaired.

Clichés, cartridges and 12 million rubles

A gang of five people who made and sold counterfeit money, hard to distinguish from real ones, was detained in the North Caucasus. The total volume of banknotes amounted to 12 million rubles.

The Center for Public Relations of the FSB of Russia said that the attackers organized the work of an underground workshop in the village of Sergokala, where counterfeit banknotes with a face value of 5 thousand rubles were printed. The similarity with the original banknotes was 90-95%. Counterfeit money was distributed on the territory of several regions of Russia.

In addition to counterfeit banknotes, the investigators also seized four clichés, a press machine, and 10 color cartridges for a printer. A criminal case has been opened on the manufacture, storage, transportation or sale of counterfeit money. The suspects have been taken into custody.

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How counterfeiters work

In judicial practice, criminal cases on the fact of selling counterfeit banknotes are a fairly common phenomenon, especially in the outback, said Vadim Bagaturia, a lawyer, a former prosecutor's office investigator. According to him, mostly fakes come from the North Caucasus.

“It is difficult to estimate the size of the market, but it is probably a hundredth or a thousandth of a percent, because the amount of cash money in Russia is trillions of rubles, and only about 1 billion rubles of fakes are seized annually,” he noted.

Another common sales scheme for counterfeiters is importation from abroad. According to Sergei Grinin, chairman of the public organization Civil Security, most of the fakes sent to Russia are not produced in the country, but are professionally printed in other countries.

“For example, in the era of flooding the country with counterfeit dollars in the late 90s, bank tellers called these bills “Dutch” because they were printed in the Netherlands. It is difficult to print a high-quality counterfeit banknote: you need special paper that has chemical protection and can be checked with reagents,” the expert explained.

Despite this, modern technologies make it possible to make clichés for the production of banknotes close to the original ones. The only question is paper, watermarks and 3D holograms - this is the most difficult part for counterfeiters, Bagaturia added. Grinin also specified that, according to the law, worn-out printing presses and other equipment used in the official production of banknotes must be destroyed. But this does not always happen - there were cases when machines were taken abroad and sold there.

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“From the point of view of the law, the transfer of banknotes from the joke shop to the seller in the store constitutes fraud. However, if a person pays with one counterfeit banknote, then he is unlikely to be held liable - it will be enough to explain to the police officers where the banknote came from. In the event that only counterfeit money is found with him, then there is a chance to fall under the article on sale, ”Bagaturia emphasized.

There are several ways to check the authenticity of Russian banknotes.

Thus, when viewed against the light, a watermark has only dark areas compared to the general background of the paper. There are no halftones on the watermark imitation.

The number "1000", consisting of punctured holes in the paper, looks uneven in the light. Due to punctures with a thin object, the area of ​​paper at the location of the imitation of microperforation on the reverse side has a significant roughness, which is felt tactilely.

The five-thousandth banknote, for example, has several tangible and visual features: an iridescent coat of arms of Khabarovsk (when the banknote is tilted, a bright shiny strip rolls over it), an additional watermark is a portrait of Nikolai Muravyov-Amursky, an iridescent security thread on the front side, and relief strokes along the edges and the emblem of the Bank of Russia are convex to the touch.

The Central Bank advises checking the authenticity of the banknote, paying attention to the metallized security thread embedded in the paper. So, for banknotes in denominations of 1000, 2000 and 5000 rubles, depending on the year of issue, it is located on the left or right side of the banknote. On a genuine banknote, the thread is always smooth. On counterfeit banknotes, the edges of the exit of the security thread to the surface may be uneven, as sometimes it is simply glued to the paper.At the same time, as experts note, counterfeiting as a phenomenon will be alive until humanity entirely switches to cashless payments.

“Because counterfeiting digital money is impossible. In general, Russian money is considered one of the most secure in the world,” said ex-prosecutor Bagaturia.

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