How Counterfeiters Imitate Security Features

If any of our readers are familiar with the popular British TV series Poldark, a late 18th-century saga set in a rural tin-mining community, they may recall the episode when miners were paid with newfangled paper money due to a shortage of coins. The sceptical miners were reassured that the paper money was genuine because of the watermark. A subplot involving attempts to counterfeit the money failed because the counterfeiters were unable to replicate the feature.

'Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose', as the saying goes. In other words, two and a half centuries later and things don't appear to have changed much.

At the High Security Printing™ Latin America conference in Guatemala earlier this year, Acir de Oliveira Junior, criminal expert from the Brazilian Federal Police, presented techniques used by organised criminal groups over the last five years to simulate banknote and ID document security features.