Biggest Counterfeiter in US History During Obama Years
Money for nothing: The story of the biggest counterfeiter in US history
(SkyNews UK Mar 7 2020)
https://news.sky.com/story/money-for-nothing-the-story-of-the-biggest-counterfeiter-in-us-history-11942377
Frank Bourassa was running a brake factory in the city of Trois-Rivieres in Quebec, Canada, before he sold the business after suffering from burnout in 2004.
The 34-year-old didn't know what he was going to do next, but thought "one thing is for sure, I am longer going to work myself to death".
The former factory owner, now 49 and still living in Trois-Rivieres, told Sky News: "I had been working 20 hours a day and was burned out so bad.
"There was this moment where I was stopped at a red light, and I was like - 'why do we go to work? Why do we set up businesses? The end goal is money.
"It was at that moment that I decided I was going to start printing fake money."
In the years that followed Bourassa became the most prolific counterfeiter in US history, producing $250m (£194m) in forged American bank notes in an illicit print shop he set up on a farm.
The scale of the operation meant it was perhaps inevitable he would eventually be caught, but it also served as a bargaining chip when $1m (£774,000) in fake cash was found in a raid on his girlfriend's home.
Bourassa printed off his stash in the form of 12.5 million counterfeit $20 notes, before selling stacks of them for 30% of their fake value.
The money-maker said he had previously run a "fairly large cannabis growing operation", but had never committed a crime on the scale of his counterfeiting enterprise.
He was set to make $75m (£58m), in real money, if he was able to shift his entire supply of bogus bank notes.
Although Bourassa came up with the idea in 2004, it was another few years before he was ready to start printing off his fortune.
"The paper, the ingredients - I knew nothing about it.
"There is a ton of work that goes into that paper, everything about it is different."
The first step was to work out "the exact recipe" of US bank notes before finding a paper mill that was willing to replicate it.
Bourassa said his notes had to be made from roughly 75% cotton and 25% linen.
He also needed them to have watermarked images of the former US president Andrew Jackson, which would show when the note was held up to the light.
The supplier would also have to fit security strips to the product reading "USA twenty", before it was delivered to Bourassa as what would appear to be a blank canvas.
The counterfeiter would add more security features and the bank notes' green and peach colouring in his print shop.
Bourassa said paper mills were "quite suspicious" when he contacted them in 2008.
"I told these guys I was high up in an investment company and I needed a very secure type of paper.
"I said we were making our own bonds."
The counterfeiter contacted "tens and tens" of companies before a "very specialised" firm in another part of the world accepted the order.
"I had to order enough to print off $250m because that was the minimum quantity they were prepared to make for a custom batch."
Printing fake money doesn't come cheap, with the paper alone costing Bourassa around 50,000 Canadian dollars (£29,000).
It then had to be shipped from the country where it was produced to the Port of Montreal in Canada.
"Perhaps the most nerve-wracking bit about the whole thing was waiting for it to be picked up.
"I paid a guy to go and get that order.
"When I took ownership of that paper I knew I was going to be filthy rich."
Bourassa had rented a garage from a farmer who allowed him to set up the print shop no questions asked.
The counterfeiter kitted it out with a full colour printing press that cost 125,000 Canadian dollars (£73,000).
He also had a printing plate which would transfer the images you see on a real bank note on to his phoney cash.
"I had cutters, slicers, bundling and counting machines, I had it all."
Bourassa said the whole venture cost him around 325,000 Canadian dollars (£189,000) and was funded through the profits from his brake business and cannabis operation.
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