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$900,000 in counterfeit US dollars seized on a rail container with its place of origin being china.

Have to expect a few conspiracy theories designed to explain this.

Could this represent an example of china waging trade war on the united states. Or perhaps it is completely coincidental a standard practice which had been ongoing for years until it was randomly exposed this week.

Some will always see conspiracies everywhere they look.

The logic is simple though. There are always some who try to sell/use counterfeit money. And where's the cheapest to print such things? Yep, China.
There may be not even illegal there to print foreign currency - I mean it's another country, another legislation and so on. Of course it's illegal to get them into US. And that's what customs are for, after all...
All in all, no biggie.

^^

Although, it could be what he said. There are a lot of people in China that are in the business of printing fake money or selling fake clothes/technology. Basically, anyone would have seen fake shoes/clothes that are being sold for huge amounts of profit. The chances that the counterfeit money is actually from China, is not low in the slightest.

Although I might be a skeptical person, it does seem weird that the US secret service was just able to track the money from China. If there was more information explaining the process, maybe it would seem more believable, but now it just seems like a case of he said that, and I don't have the highest amount of trust in the US government with some of the things they've been involved in.

Customs in the US is actually quite bad from the glimpses I've seen. It's not as in-depth as other countries and a lot of it relies on technology that can be cheated easily, and random strokes of luck.

Counterfeit currency in the form of $1 bills?That's weird.
Usually the criminals print fake paper money with a way bigger value.
I expect that the Chinese secret services or the Hong Kong Mafia have something to do with this.
Hiding such big amount of paper in a rail container that's about to be inspected by the US customs,seems very amateurish move from a spy or a gangster. :-\

Even the US government I'm very sure would be investigating this issue to find out if there's any conspiracy in this, there may not be, but for a country like the United States of America that relies and values their Economy, they wouldn't be taken this likely or for granted. China as a country may just be popular for producing fake products just like this one, maybe it's nothing serious.

 I do not think the Chinese government has anything to gain "waging a trade war" against the US, except they release a statement claiming otherwise, or that will unravel it all.

It could purely just be coincidence. As we all know China is the main guy for making counterfeit, bootlegged.m, and fake goods. Heck, allegedly they even made fake rice out of plastic. So it's not really that surpirising. What's baffling is how silent their government is about these issues. Kind of skepticsl whether they are letting them do this because they gave up stopping people or they are supporting this cause. Either way it's good that these are intercepted.

Producing counterfeit currency is almost always state sponsored financial terrorism. The theories to explain this are far from conspiracy theories. This 900K is probably just a drop compared to the whole operation. India has been at the receiving end of Fake currency published in Pakistan for several years now. There are regular seizures and this was one of the reason that a large tranche of high value notes were removed from circulation in India.

While most people consider that exercise a failure, Govt has maintained that it lead to a drop in the Kashmir unrest because the financing got stopped as the old currency notes were left invalid. Then there is the long term effect of causing inflation but that would mean significant larger amounts.

These smaller amounts are generally meant to finance the small operations in terror related activities. It is understandable between India and Pakistan but why would China do something like that to the USA is a little difficult to understand. Undermining US position as the superpower by financing covert operations?

Well, when we talking about "partnership with the Secret Service" it made me shocked. Seems like Kingsman alike organizations are real. I wonder how to get in touch with them and join them. Going back, --I am not surprised where this counterfeited money came from. China can fake anything. Perhaps the Bureau of Customs should focus on this if they really care about the US economy. Counterfeit currencies are like bullets. It is used as the equipment in the financial war. This is really alarming and I would need to check what would happen in the next decade. Indeed, war is really getting started. I wonder who would win this time.

Why?  China has been counterfeiting everything the US produces for years, so why should its cash be any different?  

And the US has done very little to stop the other counterfeiting China does, which is of Nike shoes, Apple products, American silver eagles, and a whole bunch of other stuff.  Funny how when it's money that's getting faked the government issues a press release--and that's because when China does that it's a direct hit on the government itself.  If money is getting diluted, they'll eventually feel it.

Anyway, there's probably a lot more of this going on than the one bust but $900k isn't a big sum in the grand scheme of things, not when there are hundreds of billions of US dollars in circulation.  This might be more of a hit piece against China than anything else, but that's not to say this isn't a real problem because it is.

That is indeed weird, but whatever.  Who knows what they're thinking?

I guess it is counterfeit, and it is manufacturing, I don't really see any conspiracy other than some dude wanted to get richer. $900k is literally nothing in the scheme of things, if China ever wanted to do something bad they wouldn't do it with just $900k, they have chances to do billions of dollars anyway, plus they are holding TRILLIONS of dollars in treasury of USA as well so I doubt it was anything more than just a guy wanting to get rich quick.

Considering china is perfect for manufacturing something like this, that person probably agree with a place there, got it done, shipped it but someone tipped the authorities so he couldn't get what he wanted done. At least, it sounds as simple as that, I wouldn't look beyond that if it was me but I can't really say about all the tin foil hat people.

You can collapse a country's economy with this. It's considered as a major crime in my country, you can be jailed for up to 30 years, much more than if you had killed a child. And the motivation is a lot different than your counterfeit nike, it's not for the sake to make money.

People lose confidence in the currency and no longer accept it, companies can't trade anymore because their partners don't want to deal with them, banks refuse to lend money to countries and so on, it's a snowball effect. And I remember to read that just 1% is enough

Hitler used this method during world war 2 as a politico-military weapon (Operation Bernhard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bernhard)). He wanted to see the British economy collapsing so he created fake GBP notes in order to lower the value of its currency...
The UK did it too during the American Revolutionary War. Hungary, Germany, and Austria participated in a similar operation against France.

It could be the same case regarding China if 900k US banknotes have been found, who knows what haven't been?

I think that almost everything that is told on the news is just a performance for people to distract us from really important things. Or sometimes there are hidden messages that we don’t notice, but which heat the atmosphere or with the help of which interested people can cause us some kind of emotions (indignation, fear, etc.). Therefore, I think that you shouldn't watch the news and even more take them seriously. We will not get any benefit from this.

I think this is happening all the time.  The part that was interesting is that they were all $1 Bill's.  Most of the time it is $20s and or higher denominated Bills.  One dollar Bill's almost never get checked for legitimacy so that would be a real issue for store owners as they wouldn't suspect these hitting their stores.  Scary really.

Commendable logic, and a very plausible one, might I say.

Let's just "conspiracise" the whole thing for a second, I mean, even if those 900,000$ got into the US, it won't change shit. There's so much of legit and counterfeit money  mixed up in the US, it'll take ages to get those counterfeit notes dealt with. And the person who probably tried to get counterfeit from China, it would probably be some mid-tier drug dealer who just wants more money to make and sell drugs. ¯\_( ツ )_/¯ 

LeGaulois answered one of the main reasons why there could be conspiracy theories surrounding this. Flooding a nation with counterfeit bills in an attempt to collapse its economy has been attempted in the past as a form of warfare.


Here's a youtube summary of Nazi Germany's Operation Bernhard I saw awhile ago, for those who prefer video clips to reading:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ey0Q-DPMgQU

With counterfeit bills, the concern isn't necessarily with what you see. But rather what you don't. $900,000 in countefeit could represent the tip of an iceberg with far more worrying sums & volumes going undetected.

As far as I know, amateur counterfeiters whose primary motive is greed or profit duplicate larger denominations of money. They would prefer to have counterfeit $10, $50, $100.

Counterfeiting $1 dollar bills could imply the motive is for the counterfeiting op to go undetected for as long as possible. Which could mean it is a large scale attempt to collapse the US economy or wage economic/financial warfare. Or that there is some other strategy or motive in play.

Also for those who say fiat money has an advantage in terms of it not being vulnerable to 51% attacks. Counterfeit cash could be their 51%.

I see the news and whats concerning to me more than how or why it was done is how is this even possible, like, money as we know should be a proof of hard work and how easily they created almost a million fake dollars. That's why we need blockchain and Bitcoin to dethrone these establishments who can in their convenience play with proof of hard work by faking it lol.

Since there is a trade war going on it is possible that they will do things like that but this is not a huge stash of counterfeit currency and the best part is that they were able to seize it before distribution and these small denomination will always pass through once it starts circulating and may be that is the reason they counterfeited the lowest denomination.

If you are looking for conspiracy theories Russia is accusing the US even for the new outbreak of Corona virus and they call it the new bio warfare to destabilize the economy which is already hammered by trade restrictions and sanctions and $900K seized is not a huge amount to destabilize the US economy and since they were able to identify counterfeit currencies they will be vigilant .

As i said for earlier it is easier for circulation as people will not carefully scrutinize a dollar bill but if the denomination is higher then the chances of getting identified is easier.

The quality of the counterfeit money is important too. The ones with poor quality are easily found and removed.
However, I've searched and it seems that there are about 11.7 Billion one dollar bills. So there's quite a quantity there and 900k can be easily mixed/lost there.


Umm.. I think that a drug dealer would work with bigger bills. At least 20$. I mean that 1$ is small...
Edit: an idea would be that he'll give them as change to the junkies  ;D (although that could be bad for the business)

China is developing so fast it's going to dethrone the USA soon unless something is done about it.

USA wants to be the top power in the world, and I believe these things like the coronavirus hysteria, the counterfeit money and everything is just a stunt to slow down their economy.


Nobody wants to buy things anymore from them because the products might be contaminated. This goes for everything, from AliExpress to food. Therefore, the economy is stunted in this way.

https://i.imgur.com/AAsYfQv.jpg

The Wuhan Institute of Virology, located 20 miles from the epicenter, may be the most likely source of recent corona virus infection. Its been claimed SARS was leaked perhaps accidentally from a laboratory there in 2004.

Corona virus infects the lungs. Infection isn't spread by eating raw meat or unusual meals. Images and clips of chinese eating bats and other things see like the cover up story for what really occurred.

Don't forget only one shipment of counterfeit bills was intercepted. There could have been 10 shipments. 100. 1000. Who knows. Like I said before which everyone ignored: Its not what you see that is dangerous with counterfeit. Its what you don't see.

This corona virus has really be spreading and it is creating a negative impact on deals from china. China is a country which is most vigorously involved into the international trade markets as they export most of their products. China has maximum number of production line.

There are a lot of commodities which are been produced by china in much cheaper price than they already are been circulating for. This might have perhaps motivated china to create countrified currencies and sell them for much cheap price than the actual value for the currency is. This is something they do each time though as Chinese products are much popular as they are cheaper.

Seriously, everyone acts like $900k is a big amount of money but its insanely low considering how much cash is around the world, specially in dollar form. This is definitely on individual level and not something secret or big picture thing unless its just one party that got caught and 100 others went fine without getting caught.

I would probably just focus on finding the source of this, both the person who was receiving and the place that was making it, those are the real threats, hell even the person who asked for it is not as major threat as the place that made this because they now have the technology to print as many dollars as they want and if they just keep it away from USA and just use it in other nations for exchange, they could seriously get away with it.

Lots of things that havent seen yet which is indeed more dangerous than on the current thing we have seen.It might be a little bit off topic but
that current corona virus wont really be that different with SARS.You can connect things up and the plausible chance is high.The thing here is that
they do cover it out to divert publics mind and wont really know the true story behind.Same goes to this counterfeit thing and we dont know
if there were hundreds or thousands of shipments had already done in the past.

I would rather say, China is a country which is getting most advanced and also they do have alternative for each and every commodity so why would not be the case with counterfeit US dollars? This is not the first time I am going through any such news, but previously even larger number of counterfeit currencies are been seized by a number of countries and not only the US.

This might not start any trade war as there might be no such intentions but just they would like to sell fake currencies to the US in order to generate revenue for their own sake. This is the most contagious tendency and I am sure there would be some means and modes to identify and eliminate such counterfeit currencies because those can unbalance the economic conditions of the specific country.

I doubt that this has anything to do with the trade war. In fact, this has nothing to do with global trade.

I do think that it's simply a coincidence. Countrfeit currency is not something that is new to the US (when you consider that the secret service was initially designed to combat this issue anyway). $900k worth of counterfeit currency is barely enough to make a drop in the ocean, so it's much more likely that rogue actors are individuals/organised crime than from the perspective of a state.

But yeah, this is one of the weaknesses of physical fiat that I think governments will look at and use as a reason to move towards cashlessness further and further.

A significant part of the money is in use and does not go through banks for a very long time, and you also need to take into account the fact that the activities of counterfeiters practically do not stop and therefore there is always something to withdraw from circulation.  I believe that this seizure of a large amount of counterfeit funds is just another government action from many of the planned activities.

2019-nCoV could have been biologically engineered, or simply studied at the Wuhan Institute and released in a lab accident. That still wouldn't rule out animal-to-human communicability. The jury is still out regarding how the outbreak happened.

Some interesting reading on the conspiracy theory angle: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/01/mining-coronavirus-genomes-clues-outbreak-s-origins

I think this is a pretty reasonable opinion:



Do you see a connection between the two events (a perhaps bio-engineered corona virus and the counterfeit operations)? Two covert methods of warfare? :-X

I didn't understand your idea first but I got it now, you're referring to the USA vs China? 2 weeks after the preliminary trade agreement signed, when China promised to buy in mass American products?

It doesn't make sense from the USA side...unless the USA accepted to sign it with an idea behind, slowing down the Chinese economy (i.e Hunday is now forced to stop its production) and European too since the EU economy depends a lot on China nowadays

To bring hatred to china so that the population will accept a war, the USA style btw, but only $900k? The same news would need to appear twice a month for many months to work.

It might be good in theory but this invalidates also the conspiracy theory
Why would a foreign power make this attack this way?
Forging 1$ bill then sending them in batches of 900k parcels? Not really a covert operation, isn't it?

How about doing this...
Inserting fake dollar bills in every pack that is transacted when people are exchanging yuans for usd when leaving China?
Not only they will prop up their currency but also they would do this from the safety of their media controlled country with nobody finding out.
Also, why not do this in other countries where they have far more influence and could get away with it?

Shipping packs of fake currency and ..doing so from exactly China!!!! , this is no secret operation.

The US Secret Service seized $30 million in fake cash in the agency's biggest bust ever
https://www.businessinsider.com/r-us-peru-seize-30-million-in-fake-dollars-biggest-bust-ever-2016-11
Turkey seizes $271m in counterfeit US currency
httpp://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190722-turkey-seizes-271-mln-in-counterfeit-us-currency/
Nothing new.

Besides..
Why could china want to collapse the economy of the US?
So they don't have to whom they sell their merchandise anymore?
Not really a great plan, isn't it?

I think it's just a coincidence and not part of a trade war. Replicating things is like such a big part of the Chinese worker, that obviously some are going to replicate hundred dollar bills.

Yes, I'm referring to the US vs. China. I should let Hydrogen clarify himself, but I was referring to 2 things I think he is alluding to:

1) This seizure might indicate a larger Chinese operation to destabilize/erode confidence in the USD
2) The corona virus may have been a weapon biologically engineered by the Chinese government (perhaps to be used against an adversary like the US, although the outbreak may have been accidental)


Good point.

Considering there has been coronavirus in the humans for the past over 10 decades and only a new version was spreading, I do not really rule out the possibility that the coronavirus may have evolved itself, viruses to evolve to stay habitant in people, they are not stuff that easily just goes away and doesn't create an issue, this is not like the common flu where you can get some shots and be on your way.

So, probability suggests that Corona just evolved into something more severe but with amount of high tech medicine we have in today's world they already found a way to stop it and it won't be creating too much problem for the humanity in the following days, hell even today people are already forgetting about it and it hasn't been over 2 weeks yet, think what will happen in few months when nobody talks about it.

I don't think there's a connection between the corona virus and seized counterfeit cash aside from both originating in china. Totalitarian regimes have a history of testing chemical and biological weapons on their own citizenry. That could explain the corona virus outbreak if it was indeed intentional. It may also explain ebola outbreaks in africa. It could imply a depopulation agenda is being pursued and from time to time biologically engineered pandemics are being tested under real world conditions for contagion spreadability and fatality rates.

Like the famous saying goes, never attribute to malice that which could be explained by incompetence. It is wholly possible the release was accidental. Safety standards in china being more deregulated and less enforced. Perhaps similar to chernobyl in russia. And other russian disasters which occurred due to their developmental process being less strenuous.




If the US economy collapsed.

Whoever bailed the US out could impose different terms and conditions.

China/globalists wouldn't have to conquer america. They could essentially buyout the entire country through loans and bailouts.

Small bills are easy to move around. Just think who would check if the received 1 dollar bill is genuine or fake?

It does seems like most countries in the world do have the capability of creating counterfeits that are almost identical to the real US dollar. I wonder how common it is. Like I imagine Venezuela being able to do that. Wouldn't that better their economy?

A perfect example of killing the golden goose.

Why would you want to bankrupt your client who is giving you money and you profit from this to buy what will be left of his assets cheap when afterward you will have nobody to sell stuff to?
If the US economy would collapse the first that would go down after would be China as their exports would go down the drain, factories would have to close, people will go unemployed, so they would be switching from earning money to losing and then, they will buy stuff (with what money) to do what with it? Sell it to seagulls?

If you would be running a business, what would you want your clients to be, rich or poor as hell?

The real power has always resided in controlling the supply and regulation of money, rather than accumulating or hoarding it.

Look at the world today. How is power or political leverage measured? Money. Guns. Influence. Control.

If your goal is to attack a specific political demographic, it can be accomplished via attacking the wealth their demographic owns.

Its not a linear contest to see who can accumulate and hoard the most fiat. Its about depriving rival factions of options, money, etc in an effort to reduce their capacities.

I personally think the US Politicians and the Reserve Banks are doing a lot more harm than the $900k worth of counterfeit U.S. currency that are being printed by China.  ::) <Printing US Dollars like toilet paper and making a mockery with bad political decisions>

The estimated cost to the U.S. from intellectual property (IP) theft is between $225 billion and $600 billion annually. Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_trade_war

The trade wars between the US and China has had devastating affects on the rest of the world too, with whole industries collapsing, causing even further problems with higher unemployment and an increase in crime.  >:(

Fortunately for us, we do not have any problems with counterfeiting in Bitcoin, because every single Satoshi are recorded on the Blockchain and no bitcoins can be added to the 21 000 000 bitcoins in total.  8)

This is exactly why I'm telling you this plan is the reenactment of the golden goose execution.

China is making money out of the US, if it would cripple the US's economy
- exports would go down, income would go down, companies would go bankrupt, people will go unemployed, you're crippling yourself and leaving others to take the initiative in order to achieve what, leadership in a world of poverty? Isn't it bad enough that Chinese people have lost all their will to have kids and measures have no effect you'd want to raise the bar my making all those things that prevent his even worse?

Just look at how things went down in the last decades, China is on its way of being a global power by manufacturing and trading, not by waging war and trying to destroy other's economies. That's what Russia was trying to do and look where we are now!!!

Besides if the attack would be anything serious they could simply change the banknotes and make a "recall" of all the old ones at banks only.
It's far easier for the mint to change the layout of the notes than for counterfeiters to adapt.

If China was testing their biological weapon they could have already sorted out and contained the situation by now, till now they have not contained the situation and if it was an experiment it would have been sorted out already.

Not sure about the truth of these situation but it is a possibility that those were orchestrated.
 

I do think this is completely unrelated since this happens like every other day , there are companies which are doing this since long time and this money from the black market goes directly to markets into the circulation .
I do think it is not at all linked to Corona virus or anything else it happens many times and I have seen it myself , we go to the market and people try and pass you on those fake notes.
If it was done by China then I do think that the Corona virus outbreak could have been something that the US did to pressurize them into making the whole situation neutral . But it turned out for the worse . Hope the politicians know what they are playing with .

This news story and thread could be more relevent now within the grand scheme of things. Thanks to the federal reserve greatly expanding its balancesheet. Which will in turn generate inflation. All of which could contribute towards the american economy being more vulnerable to an attack from counterfeit bills due to the weakening and stressing of its fiat currency.

We have pieces to a puzzle. How they may be assembled to make a picture is a question. Maybe it means something or nothing. We'll probably never know. Perhaps 100+ years in the future the truth will emerge. Similar to the Great Depression where the federal reserve refused to acknowledge they had caused it until nearly a century had passed.