What’s the safest way for a criminal to buy counterfeit banknotes?
Curiously, it’s not necessarily from the dark web, as 235 people now “detained” by police have just discovered. According to Europol, between 19 November and 3 December police forces in 13 countries
searched 300 properties, uncovering caches of drugs, guns and knives, along with computer wallets containing Bitcoins and the hardware needed to mine currency. About 180 of the searches were in Germany, with 28 in France, and 20 in Italy. Others took place in Croatia, Cyprus, Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK.
To prove the adage that you never know what you’ll find until you look, German police even stumbled upon two facilities for growing marijuana, one cannabis plantation and a second counterfeit euro print shop. The entire bust stemmed from the arrest in Austria in June 2018 of a single unnamed individual whom police discovered had been counterfeiting 10-, 20-, and 50-euro banknotes. These days, simply stopping a criminal is becoming a small part of this kind of arrest operation – more important is finding out who that individual was doing business with, increasingly through the dark web. On this occasion, Austrian police were able to analyse the counterfeiter’s transactions, leading them to the bigger prize – hundreds of criminal associates believed to have bought 10,000 fake currency notes. Said Europol’s deputy executive director of operations, Wil van Gemert:
- This joint effort highlights that complete anonymity on the internet and the Darknet doesn’t exist. When you engage in illegal activity online, be prepared to have police knocking on your door sooner or later.
