SPURIOUS £10 NOTES.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VIII, Issue 661, 18 April 1914, Page 2

SPURIOUS £lO NOTES.

COPIES BROADCASTED. • A WIDELY-WORKED SWINDLE REMARKABLE FORGERIES. Easily the biggest Bwindle worked on the Auckland public for a very long while ia engaging the attention of the police at the present time. A big bunch of spurious £lO notes is in circulation, and the forgery has been so cleverly executed that even the officials in the banking institutions have been "caught." It is impossible to say how many of the notes are in circulation, but one banking authority stated this Week that it looked as though the amount involved would be well over £IOOO. Nearly all the banks are now in possession of copies of the forgeries, and hotelkeepers and business people in all part of the city have apparently been taken in. Until the information becomes generally known, however that forged note 3 are in circulation, it will be impossible to gauge just how many have been negotiated. The forgery is on the Bank of New Zealand. All, apparently, are for £lO, and all are of the one date and number. It is a remarkable reproduction, prefect in design and colouring. Evidently the forgery is the work of an expert photographer and lithographer. The paper alone is not in accord with the regulation Bank stationery, but it is, nevertheless, a very good imitation. The forgery itself ia a photograph, reproduced in two colours —black and reddish Drown—and every detail is so distinctly reproduced that there is nothing to distinguish it from a genuine note. Even the multitudinous tiny "tens" which form the background of every legitimate note, and are intended to baffle penman, are faithfully photographed. The manager's signature looks as genuine as the rest of the production, and the Jate line, "Oct. Ist, 1913," which again differs in colour, has been put on with a rubber stamp in red ink. The "fake" is complete, even to the perforation. People in possession of ten pound Bank of New Zealand notes will best know whether they hold genuine papar money by referring to the number. All the forged notes bear the one number — 169948—and the same date, "Oct. 1, 1913."

It is thought likely that scores of these forged notes were put into circulation through the totalisator at Ellersiie on Saturday and Monday. If this is the case they have by his time no doubt been distributed all over the province. Banking officials are of opinion that the forgery is the cleverest thing of the kind ever Been in Auckland, and add that it is the most widely worked swindle of tho kind perpetrated in this city. Chief Detective McMahon, when seen by a reporter, said that there was no doubt tha 1 ; it was a remarkably clever forgery—in fact, the cleverest he had ever seen. The notes had evidently been circulated while the banks were closed for the Waster holidays, the forgers thus having four days in which to distribute their "paper" before it could be Buhmitted to the trained eye of a banking cashier