More Unprofitable Counterfeiting: Japanese police have made no arrests in
connection with a flurry of 400 counterfeit 1,000-yen notes that keep turning
up in vending machines in Saitama Prefecture, north of Tokyo; in each one, a
real 1,000-yen note is cannibalized to supply a key part of the bogus note.
Similarly, in Calgary, Alberta, in July, Jason James Cremer was fined about
Cdn$800 for passing a set of counterfeit $20 bills that he made by removing
the optical security devices from real $20 bills and inserting them onto his
bogus ones (and discarding the remnants of the real bills, believing them then
worthless, which police said was not true). [Reuters, 7-27-04] [Calgary Sun,
7-8-04]