Two men who had counterfeited US dollar notes worth about 16.5 million were sentenced in Cologne, NW last week. This is the highest amount of fake dollar notes ever found in Europe, and the second highest worldwide.

Last year a worker at a garbage dump found lots of shredded dollar notes in plastic bags - and in one of the bags there was also an envelope with the address of a graphic artist and fashion designer in Pulheim near Cologne. The police investigated and finally found, six months ago, the counterfeited notes, mostly $100 bills. Turned out that the shredded ones had been produced at an earlier stage and were not that good. The newer ones, however, apparently were pretty high quality counterfeits - not sold yet but still in a garage and a storage room.

On Thursday the court in Cologne sentenced the artist to six years, his accomplice got three years. On one hand there was the quality and quantity of the "notes", on the other hand the artist had made a comprehensive confession. And the reason? The man made part of his money by selling pop art prints (Warhol style) and his printing machines had been so darn expensive that he thought he could use for something else too ...

Christian

Some articles about the case:

(German) http://www.welt.de/welt_print/article13457...Jahre_Haft.html
(German) http://www.handelsblatt.com/News/Recht-Ste...falschgeld.html
(English) http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/138877.html

Christian

Seems like pretty light sentences.

Don't think so; the DA had proposed 6 1/2 years for the artist, and the court just went a little below that. Well, in the US the sentences may have been harsher, don't know. The fact that this was not an organized crime network but basically one guy could have influenced the outcome too ...

Christian

They were handed light sentences because they were faking monopoly money, whoops, I mean US dollars. Well not a lot of difference these days.

Now if they had been faking €uros, or Canadian $, then it might have been a different scenario.

They had tried postal stamps first, and also €50 notes. Both turned out to be too difficult, so they decided to make US dollars, primarily $50 notes. Now why do I post this reply now? A few days ago "Der Spiegel" had a long background article (in German) http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/0,1518,564068,00.html about the whole story ...

Christian