Frank Bourassa claims to be the best counterfeiter in the world, and he says he can prove it with his fake $20 bills. According to ABC News , Bourassa claims that his counterfeit currency is so well printed that the differences aren’t detectable by the naked eye, and authorities agree.
Just take a look at the following image. Here we see two average $20 bills laying on a black canvas, but can you tell which one is real and which one is a fake? According to ABC News , the top bill is the legal currency and the bottom is the fake.
Bourassa is a resident of Trois Rivieres outside Montreal, Canada. After working out a deal with Canadian authorities, the “master counterfeiter” only spent a month and a half in jail after Canadian authorities reportedly agreed earlier this year to not extradite him to the US for prosecution. Bourassa was, however, required to turn over his fake US $20 bills and pay a fine of $1,500 in Canadian dollars.
“I’m safe, absolutely,” Bourassa told ABC News in an interviewed to be broadcast tonight on “20/20”. “They can’t do nothing about that,” he said after freely admitting how he set up a secret printing operation capable of producing $250 million in fake US currency.
Reports state that Bourassa’s fake $20 bills first started showing up in Michigan in 2010 and US and Canadian authorities spent nearly four years tacking the source to Bourassa. According to WRTV Indianapolis , Tasha Adams , an investigator with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police said that “it was very important to get this right away, get this off the street, get this off the market.”
Even though Frank Bourassa has been caught, investigators have stated that many of his counterfeit $20 bills are still in circulation as a result of him selling the fakes in bulk to criminal groups. “One million in fakes was $300,000,” said Bourassa.
So how did Frank Bourassa get so good at making counterfeit currency? According to ABC News , Bourassa spent two years studying the details about currency security on the website of the US Secret Service to learn how to produce his fake paper bills.
From there, Bourassa said he tricked “paper mills in Germany and Switzerland to produce the unique paper made of cotton and linen used in the production of American bills,” and then was able to find suppliers in China that could provide both ink and security features that he could use that were similar to those used in US paper currency.
Even though Frank Bourassa claims he worked alone throughout this process, reports state that as the investigation continues, authorities believe that Bourassa was part of a bigger criminal enterprise.
[Images via Shutterstock/ EpicStockMedia and ABC News ]
