by Eric J. Lyman
ROME, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) -- Italian police revealed this week that two natives of Italian city Naples were behind a massive foreign counterfeiting ring that produced nearly 1 million fake euro banknotes that would have had a street value of around 28 million euros (34 million U.S. dollars) over the last two years.
Earlier, the Bank of Italy reported that it seized nearly 75,000 fake banknotes in the first half of this year, about the same number as in the second half of 2016.
Though it is very difficult to come by confirmed numbers, the consensus is that Italy has long been among the hard-hit European countries when it comes to the production of counterfeit currency.
ORGANIZED CRIME
The nearly 75,000 fake banknotes seized by the Bank of Italy in the first half of this year is more than in France or Germany. And although the 1 million fake banknotes revealed this time were produced in Romania over the past two years, Italian crime syndicates can still be traced.
"The main factor must be organized crime syndicates," Ferdinando Ofria, a professor of political economy at Sicily's University of Messina and the author of a book about Italy's role in producing fake goods of all sorts, such as fashion items, told Xinhua.
According to Fabrizio Fortunato, official with the Bank of Italy, when a banknote is suspected by the central bank of being forged, the identity of the person presenting the note will be recorded and the banknote will be sent to the Bank of Italy to be verified. And if the person has a history of presenting such fake notes, he or she could be arrested.
But most of the time, Fortunato said, it is an innocent person who suddenly finds him or herself poorer by the amount of the banknote in question.
VULNERABLE CASH SOCIETY
According to Claudio Bergonzi, general secretary of the Centromarca Institute for the Fight Against Counterfeiting, the fact that Italy is still largely a cash society makes it particularly attractive to counterfeiters.
"It will only disappear completely when the world switches to the use of electronic systems for payments. That is one form of currency that cannot be counterfeited," Bergonzi told Xinhua.
According to the bank of Italy, most of the fake notes are in denominations of 20 or 50 euros.
"A smaller banknote makes less sense because the work to create it is the same and it's worth less, and larger notes, worth 100 or 200 euros, are scrutinized much more," Fortunato said in an interview.
The central bank official said a rough estimate was that at any point in time there could be around 1 million euros (1.2 million U.S. dollars) bogus currency in circulation in Italy. He suggested that the best defense is for consumers to be more attentive.
"If the fake banknotes I've seen, some are very well done but some are very sloppy, very easy to identify," Fortunato said. "That tells me that many people just don't pay attention."
The good news is that the advances in money printing may make money less likely to be forged.
Bergonzi said it's more difficult now for counterfeiters to produce convincing replicas of currency, and the capacity for the Guardia di Finanza (Italy's financial police) to track down counterfeiters represents another major challenge for criminals.
"There will probably always be fake currency, and there will always be some people who are fooled by it," Bergonzi told Xinhua.
The problems stemming from the spread of fake currency are complex, ranging from lost tax revenue, undermining faith in the state, losses to vendors and individuals, and helping to underwrite other activities for organized crime groups.
