Counterfeiters of Hundreds of Thousands of Euro Coins Arrested

Last week, the Spanish National Police announced a major success: in cooperation with the Police Force of Catalonia and Europol, they dismantled a counterfeiting workshop that had produced about 500,000 fake coins. All of these coins are said to be 2-euro pieces; 100,000 of them were put into circulation in Spain and 400,000 in the rest of the eurozone. It is believed to be the largest counterfeiting workshop that has been exposed in Europe in 10 years. 

Catch Me If You Can…

Ten men were arrested during the raid, all of whom are Chinese citizens. As the Spanish National Police explained last Wednesday, the police had been investigating the counterfeiters since September 2018. At the time, the police came to assume that a gang of counterfeiters was operating somewhere in central Spain. However, putting a stop to their actions proved to be anything but easy. According to the National Police, the gang operated very cautiously and isolated. The counterfeits could not be traced back to a production facility, and the criminals repeatedly moved their workshop, which complicated the work of the police. In fact, the hunt for the counterfeiters as described in the Spanish press release is somewhat reminiscent of the 2002 movie Catch Me If You Can.

Between 2018 and 2021, the police repeatedly found fake 2-euro coins whose similarity indicated that they had been produced by the same criminals. 25,000 euros of these fake coins were confiscated during this period. In July 2019, they almost did it: following investigations, a warehouse in the Madrid municipality of Fuenlabrada was searched. Although the police found rings and cores that clearly had been used to produce the fake coins, the criminals had already moved on along with their equipment. The hunt went on. During the first few months of 2020, counterfeits with a total value of 34,000 euros were confiscated. The next raid followed in May 2021. A Chinese citizen reported compatriots to the Catalan police to whom he had rented premises in Barcelona. About 20 boxes with blanks, minted counterfeits and equipment were seized. But once again, the cautious perpetrators had already moved their workshop and remained at large. 

Modus Operandi

By then, the police knew that the wanted counterfeiters were men of Chinese origin. They used slot machines in gambling halls and casinos to put their counterfeits into circulation. They regularly moved their workshop as soon as they had produced a certain amount of fake coins and had put them into circulation. It is believed that their machines could produce up to 900 counterfeits a day. The counterfeits were always of high quality, as the photo of the Spanish National Police depicted above demonstrates. 

Success

In March 2024, the investigators got very lucky. During a routine check, the Madrid Municipal Police stopped a car. When the police had the driver take a breath alcohol test, they got the impression that all three men inside the vehicle – all of them Chinese citizens – were very nervous. Therefore, they checked the vehicle and found a total of 14,500 2-euro coins inside 48 bags – counterfeits, as they were to discover later. 

The police were able to find out that the three arrested men had visited a certain location in the province of Toledo multiple times. Once again, the police searched a warehouse – and finally found the counterfeiters’ mobile workshop. Alongside thousands of fake coins and blanks, the police confiscated several minting dies, two large hydraulic presses with Chinese inscriptions, three other machines, for example for edge inscriptions, two high-precision scales, compressors, a water pump, and various replacement machines. 

How to Identify the Counterfeits

The press release of the Spanish National Police does not mention what kind of 2-euro coins the counterfeits try to imitate. However, you can see some of the fake coins and minting dies in the various videos of the confiscated material. Time and again, you can spot the federal eagle of German 2-euro coins. There are also Spanish issues with Juan Carlos, French issues with the old tree motif and joint issues for the 10th anniversary of the economic and monetary union of 2009. 

Although the police do not provide precise information as to the counterfeit types, they do explain how to easily identify them: Genuine 2-euro coins have a magnetic core, while the ring of the coin is not magnetic. The counterfeits from this workshop, on the other hand, are not magnetic at all.

Unanswered Questions

Although the counterfeiters have been stopped, some questions remain unanswered: Did the men only act for personal gain? How did they get the necessary machines and the two-part blanks to create such high-quality fake euro coins? And is it even worth all the effort and the cost to produce half a million euro coins worth “only” one million euros over a period of several years as a team of at least ten people? It will be interesting to see what the investigations reveal.

In this YouTube video you can see the counterfeiting workshop and close-ups of the equipment and the counterfeits: