Counterfeiting the looney - NBC NEWS
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September 1, 2004

Counterfeiting the looney

VICTORIA, B.C. (CBS.MW) -- Counterfeiting, it seems, has become a growth industry in Canada. An article in the current Canadian Business Magazine quotes federal government statistics claiming the printing of funny money is now the sixth-largest crime category in Canada. But no one's laughing.
The increase in bogus bills up here is doubtless why there have been so many stories on the sober Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC motto: "Like NPR, but without all the flash") lately with Bank of Canada officials touting the just-released new Canadian $20 bill's numerous high-tech anti-counterfeit features.
Someone with a scanner and a printing press in a country with a population as relatively small as Canada's can be a serious concern: Canadian Business says that just one guy, a now-convicted counterfeiter from Ontario named Wesley Weber, "crippled" Canada's $100 bill three years ago. (A new one was released last January). Weber was in the business of making money -- literally -- and the magazine says retailers from coast to coast lost confidence in the Canadian $100 bill after Weber's well-executed fakes appeared. $2 million, after all, buys a lot of cups of Tim Horton's coffee. (Horton's is Canada's Denny's, eh?).
One CBC story I heard out of Vancouver reports that some Canadian merchants have resorted to rubbing $100 bills on blank paper to see if the ink smears off. That won't work, the CBC added.
Canadians, whose dollar has been steadily gaining on the U.S. greenback the past year - it now hovers around 76 cents - have for years heard their multicolored (legal) currency slandered as "funny money" by us green-obsessed Yanks. Unfairly, I might add: Getting rid of both the dollar and $2 bills makes getting change from merchants up here go a lot faster. Canada's coins may be known popularly as "loonies" ($1) and "toonies" ($2), but they sure do speed things up at the check-out counter. It's a mystery to me why we faster-paced Americans haven't followed suit and sent George Washington packing..
I've just obtained an RCMP memo describing other, less successful, counterfeit bills seized by them since 2001:
-- $5 bills with Sir Wilfrid Laurier's portrait replaced by that of Detroit Red Wings immortal Gordie Howe. (OK, Laurier may have been Canada's first French-speaking Prime Minister, and yes, he may have created the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta. BUT...did he ever win four Stanley Cups? So where's the harm?)
-- Bogus $10 bills with a portrait of Alex Trebek, and the legend, "What is counterfeiting, Alex?" on them. Fortunately, these were accepted by only a few Canadian merchants.
-- Fake 20's with a picture of the Queen on one side, and the tuque-wearing Bob and Doug MacKenzie on the other. The tip-off, says one official, was the phrase just under Elizabeth II's portrait reading: "Take off, eh, you hosers."
-- Bogus $50's, with beefy long-time Prime Minister William MacKenzie King's portrait replaced by that of plus-sized comic actor John Candy. "These ones were tough to spot," said an RCMP official, "because those two really do look a lot alike, eh?"
-- A wave of counterfeit "loonies," coins with Dick Cheney's portrait on them. The RCMP says these "were probably minted by some American political malcontents."
-- Another batch of bogus 100's that are literally "funny" money: These carry the portrait of preternaturally annoying Toronto native Howie Mandel.
* * *
A related joke currently making the rounds in British Columbia:
A gang of big-city Vancouver counterfeiters accidentally prints up a batch of $18 bills (note: Canada has the same denominations as the U.S.).
So they decide to go to a small town and pass them off.
"Do you have change for an 18?" they ask a storekeeper out in Nanaimo.
"Sure," he says. "How would you like it -- in 3's, 6's, or 9's?"
Those Canadians -- a laugh a minute, eh?

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