Europol busts criminal group making fake €100 bills

A group of counterfeiters which had been producing 100-euro bills was busted in a joint police operation involving Europol and police forces in four countries, including Greece.

The criminal group consisted of at least 18 people and their 100-euro bills were hand-made, as opposed to printed, using special ink and watermarks, which made them invisible to counterfeit bill detectors.

According to the Italian Carabinieri report, the group produced approximately 10,000 fake banknotes with a nominal value of approximately one million euros, with 4,208 of them distributed in Italy, 3,068 in Greece, 545 in Spain and 200 in France.

Police say that in July of last year, a foreign national was arrested carrying 125 of those counterfeit bills. The group had been trafficking the forged euros in many cities across the European south, in Italy, Greece, France, and Spain.

The group’s counterfeiters and traffickers are of Pakistani origin, and their fake bills were only confirmed as such after investigations by the technical department of the European Central Bank.

Europol’s operation, in which the Italian, France, and Spanish police also participated, busted the criminal group in February as part of an operation code-named Chai Fake, which led to the arrests of seven in Italy and two in Spain.