In the past two years authorities have removed more than 33,000 fake notes from circulation \u2013 triple the amount detected in 2013, reports the Sydney Morning Herald.<\/p>\n
Australia\u2019s $50 note was designed in 1995, and the then state-of-the-art security measures are no longer as effective.<\/p>\n
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Can you spot the difference? The real $50 note is on top, the fake one is on the bottom<\/h6>\nCounterfeiting-related crimes in Victoria have increased eight-fold since 2010, and one offence relating to the production of dodgy bills is recorded every fortnight, according to Victoria\u2019s Crime Statistics Agency.<\/h3>\n
During a Victorian county court case in 2015, Judge John Smallwood said:<\/p>\n
“This court sees matters where hundreds of thousands of dollars of extremely good quality notes are often produced.”<\/p>\n
And in a 2013 NSW District Court trial Judge Ross Letherbarrow said:<\/p>\n
“The quality of the $50 notes tendered in evidence was such that I was unable to tell them apart from real currency.”<\/p>\n
The Reserve Bank of Australia says the spike in fakes may have come from a single production source.<\/p>\n
In a speech last week, RBA executive Tony Richards said:<\/p>\n
“There are some signs that the counterfeiters are getting a bit better with new and cheaper scanning, printing and image manipulation technology.”<\/p>\n
The RBA has said that nine out of every 10 counterfeits detected are $50, and about 55 notes out of every million are fake.<\/p>\n