Learn how these counterfeiters used Dearneside Press, a legitimate printing business, to manufacture counterfeit Scottish banknotes. The counterfeit notes were printed at the shop, then taken to the son’s house to simulate all the security features. Three boxes of evidence were submitted for examination after the raid on both properties, but there was more to come. Sheets of counterfeit banknotes, inks, stamps, rolls of used and unused foil, dies for hot foil stamping machine, genuine pattern banknotes, crime scene photos, and computer files/images had to all be linked together for the six different counterfeit banknotes. Holograms, windowed threads, and UV patterns were simulated on UV dull paper. Amongst all the evidence was a huge surprise that Mr. Gaunt could not refute. A mammoth task, but it was all worth it! 

The scale, speed and ambition of this change brings risks.  This seminar considers those risks and options to mitigate them.  The agenda will cover the landscape across Asia, who is doing what, the drivers for change, where the public is, the risks and what central banks around the world are doing to mitigate those risks.  An important part of the session will be considering how the decline of cash accelerates beyond a tipping point and the need both to identify this tipping point and to ensure cash can be maintained for those who need it.

While banknotes have evolved, so have the machines that handle them.  Some have got bigger and faster, other machines have moved out of the central banks and become commonplace even into retail outlets.  As a result, the range and variety of security of machine readable features has also evolved. 

Part of that change has been prompted by increasingly sophisticated and organised attacks on banknotes.  Driven by this, today we have not only ‘level 2’ machine readable security features designed for day to day use, but ‘level 3’ features which are highly secure, covert, central bank only features designed to deliver near forensic level authentication at speed and in volume.

As the increasing need for automation becomes ever more essential to reduce the cost of cash; and as the commercial sector takes increasing responsibility for the management of cash within the national cash cycle, so there is greater importance to ensure that the machine-readable elements on the physical banknote remain difficult for counterfeiters to reverse-engineer whilst being more reliable and effective – and, just as importantly, that the sensors on cash management equipment are more adept at interpreting the signal from these features so as to be able to sort and authenticate accurately at higher speeds.

This seminar will focus on the interaction between the machine-readable technologies on the market today – both those level 2 features used by the commercial sector, and the covert level 3 central bank features – to explore the importance of these technologies, their interface with cash automation sensors, banknote design implications, and how they should be adopted so as to ensure there is minimum disruption and cost to the commercial sector when new banknote designs are issued by the central bank.

The seminar will be run by Secura Monde International, security consultants specialising in the entire lifecycle of cash, with contributions from some of the leaders in cash cycle technology and solutions for level 2 and 3 security.