We talked to the 'God' of counterfeiting who printed $250 million in fake cash — and got away with only 6 weeks in prison
Half-finished counterfeit $20 bills seized by the police in Trois-Rivières in 2012.RCMP
In May 2012, the Canadian policeseized $1 million worth of fake US $20 bills and arrested four suspects in Trois-Rivières, Quebec.
The officers on the scene were immediately struck by the quality of the counterfeit notes.
"It's highly sophisticated, no doubt about that," Sgt. André Bacon of Canada's federal police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, told CBC news at the time.
The police described the fake notes as "virtually undetectable to the naked eye," according to an archived press release from 2014. As well a looking just right, the counterfeit 20s felt identical to real notes, and they came with a "dark vertical stripe" that perfectly imitated the security thread on the real bills. The way banknote paper feels is a large part of currency security — it is made in only one mill, which makes only money.
Local man François Bourassa was immediately charged with the "production, possession, and distribution of counterfeit currency" and is the only suspect named in the CBC report.
Because of the remarkable quality of the counterfeit cash, the police assumed it was the work of a large and sophisticated criminal gang. Perhaps that's one reason that Bourassa served only six weeks in prison and paid a fine of about £1,000, or $1,300 at today's exchange rate, after handing in $200 million in counterfeit $20 bills before facing trial.
Bourassa says he made $250 million worth of fake notes. He is often asked where the other $50 million is. The missing stack of bills weighs about 2.5 tonnes (about 2,500 kilograms, or 5,500 pounds) and if stacked one by one would reach 250 metres, or about 820 feet.
"You would have to ask my accountant about that ... it implies complex mathematical questions," Bourassa, who refers to himself as the "Counterfeit God," told Business Insider.
The following account of Bourassa's story comes directly from an interview we conducted with him, along with contemporary media reports and a small number of press releases relating to the case, known by the police as Operation Cranium.
Key dates of the case have been confirmed to Business Insider by the Trois-Rivières courthouse. The US Secret Service and Interpol did not respond to requests from Business Insider for comment.
Bourassa was raised where he was arrested, in Trois-Rivières, a city in the Canadian province of Quebec. His criminal life began when he was 12 years old and in the seventh grade. A young Bourassa, who goes by Frank, had noticed older students arriving at school with bags full of expensive clothes they had stolen from local shops.
The adolescent saw an opportunity to work as a middleman, selling the high-end items to the school's 2,000 students. He was not concerned that he was breaking school rules or the law.
"All that really mattered to me was that the supply was coming and I had customers," Frank remembered. "It was great ... It gave me a very nice boost towards independence."
Frank continued this racket for a couple of years, sometimes earning hundreds of Canadian dollars in a week.
At 15, he was kicked out of school — "I have something of a problem with authority" — moved out of his parents' home, and found legitimate work as a mechanic. On the side, Frank began selling stolen cars. Again he felt comfortable in the role of middleman.
After years of both legal and illegal work, and hard partying, Frank decided to go straight in his late 20s. Using his experience with cars, he set up his own factory which produced brake pads.
Unwilling to do anything by a half measure, Frank began working 20-hour days to help grow his small business. The business was profitable, but Frank was exhausted.
One morning the long days caught up with him and he had a nervous breakdown.
"I was in a sweat and shaking like crazy," Frank said. "I didn't have a clue what was happening to me."
Frank does not remember his exact diagnosis, but doctors told said his body was incredibly low on almost every vitamin.
"I was out of just about everything but blood," Frank said.
Frank's hands would not stop shaking, and he felt incapable of work. So he sold his business and spent two years travelling Europe, Asia, and Africa with his girlfriend at the time.
"I couldn't work anymore because I was shaking so much," Frank said. "All I could take was travel."
On returning from his impromptu grand tour, Frank resolved never to make his money from legal work again. "If I were to get into a different legit business, it would have been the same deal over again: 20-hour days," Frank said. "There was no way I was I going to allow it to happen, ever again."
By this time, Frank had started spending a lot of time on his own, thinking about his next big scheme.
"I do better when I'm alone," Frank said. "I ride around in cars and listen to music and think."
Frank was supplementing his savings by getting involved in the booming illegal marijuana trade. This came to an end in 2006 when Frank was convicted on a drug-related charge and incarcerated for three months.
In 2008, as a free man able to go on long drives again, Frank had the epiphany he had been waiting for:
"It occurred to me at a red light: Why the hell go through all this hassle of finding product, selling it, finding customers, accounting, and all of that trouble, to bring it back as money?"
"I loved money so much I decided to make my own," he said.
Frank wanted to emphasise that he chose the US dollar not because he disliked American people or the US government, as implied in an ABC report, but because it was accepted in the most countries.
For the next 1 1/2 years, Frank committed his replenished energy to learning the process of printing money from scratch. Frank said official government websites were a particularly useful starting place because they offered detailed descriptions of each note's security features. The US Currency website still does.
"I figured it was going to be very hard, but it was never daunting," Frank said. "I've been engineered from birth to find solutions for anything."
Frank settled on the $20 bill. It is less suspicious than the $50 or $100 notes. Its design at the time was older, with worse security features than the $10 bill. He did his research by moving between various internet cafes in Quebec, not wanting to draw attention to himself in any one location.
There were two major stages to the printing process. First, Frank had to source the paper used in US bank notes — a blend of cotton and linen that is unique to currency producers in the US. Second, he had to buy the very expensive printing equipment and software.
Frank said ordering the paper was a "huge undertaking" and probably the toughest part of the process.
The fraudster began phoning paper mills across Europe, hoping to find a producer who was either gullible or bent. Frank's con was dependent on the theory that in Europe people would be less familiar with the constituent parts of the US dollar bill and therefore more likely to take his order. He made sure to conduct all of his correspondence by email under a fake name and fake business. He was aware that a recorded phone conversation could end up being his downfall in any future court case.
"They might be all nice on the phone," Frank said, "but how do you know if they're just going to turn around and call secret services?"
Frank told a paper mill in Germany that he represented an investment company that wanted to print bond certificates on secure paper to resist counterfeiters. The mill agreed to tackle the job. Throughout the process, he returned with slight modifications. Frank's second-most audacious move was to ask for the printing company to add a small security strip reading "USA TWENTY."
Harder than this was to trick the company into adding an etching of US President Andrew Jackson's face to the watermark. To do this, Frank had to have a special watermark machine made in Poland, which he delivered to the paper mill in Germany. Remarkably, the German paper mill showed no sign of suspicion.
With this level of modification, the paper mill told Frank the minimum order would cost him $30,000. This was enough for $250 million in fake currency. The equipment, including an expensive Heidelberg offset printer, cost about $300,000.
Frank figured that if he sold the counterfeit notes for 30% of their face value, he would make nearly $80 million.
"It's not a number that I chose," Frank said, "it just seemed right."
While the paper was in production, Frank began sourcing the software and learning how to use it. He said he set up an entire printing shop on the outskirts of town.
The police have still not found the location of the print shop, and Frank has vowed never to return.
In late 2009, Frank's order of paper arrived from the German paper mill.
"I knew this second I was filthy rich and there was no stopping me," Frank said.
Without pausing to celebrate, Frank began working 16-hour shifts, printing nearly every sheet of bank-note-quality paper he had, to reduce the amount of incriminating evidence that could be used against him.
Frank said his girlfriend at the time, who had been his travelling companion years earlier, had no idea what he was doing during the printing process.
"Most of the time I'd tuck her in at 10 p.m. and afterwards I'd leave for my work," Frank said. "I'd come back in the morning as often times as possible, to bring her breakfast or something like that ... That's the criminal life I had then."
"She has never had a speeding ticket in her whole life," Frank added. "She's a fully fledged law-abiding citizen."
After five months of relentless printing, Frank says, he had gathered the full $250 million of fake bank notes. He was now "rich," and if he managed to offload all of the notes, he would never have to work again.
After the start of his research process, Frank managed to line up four potential customers. Many criminals, including international drug smugglers, had turned down Frank's offer because they thought it was too risky.
Frank said most of his customers started with "small" orders of about $100,000 to test out the notes before moving up to $250,000 and then $500,000. Finally, when buyers had realised the extremely high quality of the counterfeits, they began fulfilling orders of $1 million at a time. Throughout, Frank sold the notes for 30% of their face value.
Frank's customers were deliberately all from outside the US. He says he did this to avoid "flooding businesses in the US who were having it tough enough as it is," after the 2008 financial crash.
For a while, Frank's business ran smoothly — but not rapidly.
By 2012 Frank had hardly made a dent into his original $250 million stack. He realised that he needed to increase his rate of deals if he were going to retire with his riches. So, Frank added a new criminal gang to his list of clients.
Unfortunately for him, this gang had been infiltrated by an undercover police officer. The cop placed an order for $100,000. The next day, supposedly thrilled with the first batch, he ordered the same again. Frank did not realise that a police helicopter had followed as he handed the box of counterfeit bills to a middleman, who then passed it on to the undercover police officer.
On May 23, 2012, Frank was staying at his girlfriend's house. The couple were "sound asleep" when they were awoken by loud banging on the door at about 5 a.m.
The RCMP had arrived, accompanied by two agents from the US Secret Service.
"She didn't have a clue that was coming," Frank said. "Her children were there. It was a mess. It felt horrible."
Frank was immediately handcuffed while the police searched the house and his car. Along with guns, a printing press, marijuana, methamphetamine, and hash, the police found $949,000 in fake currency. They were visibly pleased with the haul, Frank remembered. The police had no reason to believe there was more than $200 million stashed elsewhere, on the edge of town.
"Before I even started to plan for any of this, the very first concrete thing that I did work on and plan for was my escape," Frank said.
He had entrusted a friend, a "total outsider" who was not involved in the counterfeit operation, with the location of his huge stash of counterfeit notes. On Frank's orders, the friend would release the mass of green paper together to be used as one huge bargaining chip.
"I was hoping it would work, but once you're [in prison] you realise you don't get to decide — it's all about courts," Frank said.
During Frank's interrogations by the police, agents from the US Secret Service told Frank they were looking to extradite him and he could face up to 60 years in prison. Frank was worried. He had not expected to be in such trouble with the US authorities. He expected to be dealt with by the Canadian government, which he considers more lenient. Nevertheless, Frank had still not played his $200 million "get out of jail free" card, yet.
Most of the following details come from Frank, as Crown prosecutors were unwilling to comment on many details of the negotiation at this time. The Trois-Rivières court confirmed key dates of the case with Business Insider. The account is corroborated and supported by further details from an earlier interview Frank conducted with Wells Tower for GQ.
Frank's lawyer, who wishes to be kept anonymous, argued that the police's raid on Frank's girlfriend's house was illegal because it wasn't based on clear-enough evidence. Frank had been filmed driving into a parking lot — but not actually moving the cash into his middleman's house. So the footage did not actually show Frank exchanging counterfeit notes. If judges bought this argument, Frank's case could have been entirely dismissed in court.
The lawyer, whom Frank described as the "best in the world," used this claim as a bargaining tool to get Crown prosecutors to suspend Frank's extradition to the US.
Frank was granted bail after six weeks, while the Canadian police gathered more evidence against him for the eventual court case.
At least now Frank was on home turf, dealing with a judiciary system he had grown to know intimately since his earliest brushes with the law as a teenager. He got a job in construction and refused to talk about the money with anyone, expecting his phone to be tapped by the police.
Frank's court date was set for December 2013. On walking to the courthouse, Frank finally said to his lawyer: "I have $200 million — can you do something with that?"
"Are you fucking kidding me?" the lawyer asked.
"No," Frank said.
The lawyer entered the courthouse and approached to Crown attorney, telling him about the huge stash of counterfeit notes. After another couple of months of negotiations, Frank's deal was set: In exchange for the $200 million in counterfeit notes and the offset printing press, which Frank says "would have ended up somewhere flooding the streets of the US eventually," Frank was let free. Frank was ordered to pay a fine of 1,350 Canadian dollars for the drugs found in his car during the raid.
Sure enough, Frank arranged for the counterfeit bills to handed over to the police, and he was allowed to go free with no more time behind bars.
Trois-Rivières court confirmed that all charges against Frank were dropped on March 27, 2014, once the Crown prosecutors gave notice that Frank's side of the deal had been fulfilled. Though Crown prosecutors have been unwilling to discuss details of the deal, the RCMP press release from January 31, 2014, confirms that the police had seized a "large quantity of paper" which "could" have been used in the production of up to $200 million. This seizure was in between the date Frank's trial had been set for (when he says he revealed he had $200 million) and the date that all charges were dropped.
"There's no way I'm ever going to touch another counterfeit again, even with a 100-foot pole, ever in my life," Frank said.
"The deterrent factor of jail was really potent, and it's been a turning point in my life," he added. "You get 60 years at 40 years [old], it means your life is over."
Since Frank first told his story, rumours have circled that he did not create the huge supply of counterfeit notes all on his own. When I put this to Frank, he had a clear answer:
"In what world would any criminal or criminal organisation give $200 million to a front guy so that he could give it to the courthouse, instead of giving him a couple of bullets in the back of the head?"
Frank's turnaround has been complete. He now runs his own consultancy service for businesses looking to avoid counterfeiters. Similar to a hacker hired by Google or a government intelligence agency, Frank says his expertise in creating counterfeit notes has left him in the perfect position to guard institutions against similar schemes.
Frank claims his clients range from governments to large corporations, though he says he has promised them all anonymity.
"My new mission is now to eradicate the counterfeiting problems at the highest levels of corporations," Frank said. "I've decided to completely reinvent my counterfeiting operation and turn it into a positive opportunity to help people." Frank works remotely out of Canada out of fear of further extradition charges to the US. He says he consults on preventing counterfeit fraud in bank notes, driver's licences, passports, birth certificates, fashion, and the pharmaceutical industry.
Though Frank has emerged with very light punishment, it's clear that he is still haunted by his past crimes.
"Life is complicated for me now," Frank said. "A lot of people are not happy about the outcome of my situation. I've got many people breathing down my neck, waiting for me to commit mistakes."
"I've been laying low," he added.
A novel about Frank’s story will be published by Harper Collins later this year, and Frank is in discussions with several Hollywood studios about a feature film.
