Seized fake yuan of higher quality than in 2008, police say
Police in Jiangsu province have seized a batch of counterfeit yuan notes that are of higher quality than the series of fake notes whose numbers began with HD90, first seen in 2008, state media reports.
An investigation team from the Public Security Bureau in Nanjing said they arrested four suspects two weeks ago and seized two vehicles and counterfeit 100-yuan notes worth a total of 81,000 yuan (HK$92,520), all with PX serial numbers, the Modern Express reported yesterday.
Nanjing police warned the public to be alert to 100-yuan notes, saying they must check whether the notes bear serial numbers starting with the letters PX.
Police arrested a 31-year-old man from Anhui province who lived in Nanjing, they said.
Also detained were his sister, his brother-in-law and a fellow villager, who were involved in 11 counterfeiting cases that had surfaced since March, they said.
Two members of the group, a man and a woman, drove a white car to a small shop in a village of Nanjing's Gubai town on March 12, and asked to buy 50 packs of cigarettes, police said. The two paid 900 yuan, then replaced the real money with their counterfeit banknotes without the shopkeepers noticing at the time.
On March 22, the group replaced 1,300 yuan at a shop in another town using a similar method, police said.
The group continued with its scams in suburban areas of Nanjing until this month, when police found where its members were living. In one robbery, police said, the vendors knew the notes used to pay for goods were fake.
Cracking down on bogus banknotes has been one of the police's main tasks in recent years.
The Ministry of Public Security announced early this year that police across the mainland solved 3,688 cases of counterfeit banknotes in a 10-month campaign last year.
Police arrested nearly 6,000 suspects, smashed 41 counterfeit rings and workshops, and seized fake notes with a total face value of 1.16 billion yuan.
This was about three times the face value of all the fake notes found in 2008.
