If the Bank of Canada has its way, the days of the country’s most notorious counterfeiters could be numbered by March 2013.
That’s when the Bank of Canada plans to fully roll out its new series of dollar bills, packed with cutting-edge anti-counterfeiting features. While these new polymer notes will be the same size and color as the bills currently in your wallet, they’re printed on a smooth and durable film and boast a suite of innovative security measures. These include raised ink, transparent text, and metallic portraits—all designed to make counterfeiting a much tougher game.
Sure, these features sound like something out of a sci-fi movie, but whether they’ll finally put an end to counterfeiting is still up for debate, given its long, colorful history.
Debra Roháč, exhibition and program planner at the Bank of Canada’s Currency Museum in Ottawa, can certainly speak to that history. The museum offers an audio tour titled “Penalties of Counterfeiting,” where visitors can hear stories about various counterfeit schemes, from sand-filled cocoa beans to intricately hand-engraved counterfeit banknotes. The tour dives into the tales of some of Canada’s most infamous counterfeiters and the efforts made to stop them.
“We noticed our teenage audience enjoyed the macabre stories involving the punishments for counterfeiting, so we thought other visitors might enjoy them as well,” says Roháč. The idea behind the tour is to support the Bank of Canada’s goal of instilling confidence in its banknotes by educating visitors on three key points: counterfeiting has been around as long as money itself, it’s always been a serious crime, and counterfeiters do get caught and punished.
One of Canada’s most notorious counterfeiters was Edwin Johnson, a master engraver who created hand-engraved plates to print counterfeit notes that were so realistic that banks had a hard time distinguishing them from the real deal.
“In total, Mr. Johnson and his family produced over a million dollars in counterfeit notes before they were caught,” Roháč explains. “A million dollars was a lot more money back then than it is now. I guess the high value of the counterfeit money and the quality of the fake notes made Mr. Johnson a worthy arch-nemesis of the famous detective John Wilson Murray.”
Fortunately for Johnson, he managed to avoid one of the more extreme punishments that counterfeiters have faced throughout history: the cangue. This punishment, used in China until the last century, involved placing the criminal’s head through a hole in a large board that rested on their shoulders and locked in place. “The criminal could walk around, but the cangue prevented them from feeding or caring for themselves. They had to rely on family for survival,” Roháč explains. “The cangue was often left on for thirty days. Not only was it uncomfortable, but it was also considered extremely shameful.”
With any luck, the Bank of Canada’s new polymer notes will be enough to deter counterfeiters, sparing the nation from needing to adopt such drastic measures. But according to Roháč, there’s something we can all do to help combat counterfeiting.
“Banknotes not only need to be difficult to counterfeit—they also need to be easy for someone receiving them to check and ensure they’re real,” she says. “Each one of us who handles money can be like the great Detective John Wilson Murray and stop counterfeiting just by taking a closer look at our banknotes.”
So, the next time you handle a bill, take a moment to inspect it. You might just help keep the counterfeiters at bay.
