The Piranha of Portugal: the Greatest Counterfeiter of All Time (2014)

Thanks for posting. A very similar operation is happening today in North Korea: Millions of counterfeit USD&#x2F;CNY&#x2F;EUR are printed and laundered through NK banks every year[0]. Turns out somebody has already done it before.<p>[0]:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Superdollar" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Superdollar</a>

<i>&quot;A lowly, underpaid teller who worked part-time at a jeweler to help make ends meet had become suspicious of the Banco Angola e Metropole. The Escudo notes he received were never in numerical order (Reis’s plan to shuffle the banknotes to avoid detection actually caused detection),[...]&quot;</i><p>Rats. The Germans got caught with the WWII tank serial numbers, this guy sidesteps that (years before), gets caught.<p>Damned if you do, damned if you don&#x27;t.

Being from Portugal I wonder how this was completely unknown to me

More than anything, I find interesting the impact this probably did have on the failure of democracy in Portugal back then.

I like that one of the high end techniques was to social-engineer a banknote printing company of repute, to print your banknotes.<p>Those moments when high end US government officials get given proof sheets of banknotes, one-sided half-printed notes, Steve Woz gets his banknotes bound into a cheque-book like thing.. They&#x27;re on the fringe of &#x27;what is money&#x27; questions too.

No less than 330,000 banknotes introduced in circulation. The man is a legend.

&quot;Historical examples of government-induced debasement include: [...]&quot;<p>Does the switch of many EU countries switching to EUR count in this context as a valid example as well?