Buying a bike leads to Europe’s largest counterfeit money lab

The purchase of an electric bicycle with two counterfeit 500 euro bills in Cervelló (Barcelona) has allowed the most important and active counterfeiting laboratory in Europe to be dismantled in the last decade. Tomás, the head of the organization, had the sponsorship of Albanian drug traffickers to develop almost imperceptible money that had a quality of 9.7 out of 10as reported to Vozpopuli police sources.

Tomás MJ, a Spanish man in his 50s, has alreadyHe was arrested for counterfeiting money in 2009. His professional activity had always been focused on drug trafficking and he ended up serving a sentence in Picassent prison (Valencia). In that compound he met five other criminals who in the future were going to be his lieutenants.

This expert ‘printer’ left prison in 2017 and just two years later he returned to work with his criminal actions. For this, he had the financing of a group of drug traffickers who paid him for the machines and the material to be able to generate false 500 euro bills.

The objective of these traffickers was to keep part of the money to be able to carry out drug transactions with drug traffickers from other countries that did not perceive the difference. He achieved such quality in his notes that, according to the authorities, they were almost imperceptible and had a quality of 9.7 out of 10.

the band mistake

Such was the amount of money it produced that they ran out of holographic bands. They had to stop the machines because they were not receiving the material from China, although they had already been able to generate more than eight million fake euros, according to investigators from the National PoliceMossos d’Esquadra and EUROPOL.

The agents focused their investigations on this group in the middle of last year when they detected counterfeit bills in circulation and their incidence affected a large part of the national territory. In addition, the Investigation Brigade of the Bank of Spain, as the National Central Office for counterfeiting currency, was aware of numerous criminal acts throughout the peninsula with counterfeit banknotes of this indicative.

In parallel, on August 12, the Mossos d’Esquadra of the Central Counterfeit Currency Unit arrested two individuals who tried to buy an electric bicycle with two fake 500-euro bills. That arrest made the other members of the organization nervous, who hid a backpack with more than four million euros in fake 500 bills near his house.

friends from jail

That backpack was found by a neighbor who notified the authorities. He had previously gone to a bank branch to verify that the bills were counterfeit. That bag allowed to identify all the members of the band since it had the fingerprints of the six members of the group.

The members of the criminal group met in the Picassent prison serving sentences for different crimes, continuing their friendship when they left prison. The printer brought them together again in a warehouse in the province of Valencia, where he would have reassembled a new graphic laboratory.

During the time that the production lasted (around 3 months), each one of them carried out different functions, such as cleaning machines, purchasing different materials, etc., printing an estimated quantity of counterfeit bills of around 8,000,000 euros. ANDThe money was presumably intended for the commission of different criminal activities, such as the purchase of drugs.

He lived in a luxury house in Altea

The main investigator lived comfortably in Altea with his wife and her young daughter, leading an idle life since he was released from prison. During this time he collected material and, when he had the laboratory already installed, he brought this criminal group together again to start another process of producing counterfeit bills. Banknotes continued to enter different cities, but in small quantities.

With the arrival of the pandemic at the beginning of 2020, since it was not possible to place new orders for material in China, since it was closed commercially, production continued to be paralyzed. At this point, they decided to move the laboratory to a warehouse near the printer’s home, near Alfa el Pi (Alicante).

It was a fairly discreet ship and was used only to store the laboratory, waiting to find a new ship for production. There the printer felt quite safe, and appeared with some regularity, mainly to repair vehicles that he later sold on Internet portals.

They were thinking of moving to France

This criminal group was once again seeking funding with the idea of ​​moving the laboratory to another location and starting the process of producing counterfeit 500-euro bills. Initially they thought of Brazil, but finally they opted for France.

With all the information collected and with the printing material warehouse centered, it was decided to exploit the investigation operationally, carrying out the six arrests simultaneously in the provinces of Valencia, Alicante, Barcelona and Malaga, where six addresses were registered, two industrial buildings as well as a caravan in Teruel.

The investigation has been supervised by the Investigating Court number 4 of Sant Feliu de Llobregat (Barcelona) and entries and searches have been carried out in Xirivella, Sagunto, Altea, La Nucía, Terriente, Sant Cugat del Valles and Cervelló. It is estimated that this criminal group has produced 8,000,000 counterfeit 500-euro bills in our country.

The detainees went to court charged with the crimes of counterfeiting currency and belonging to a criminal group, entering prison the main investigated, including the printer and the leader of the group. All are already in provisional prison for these events.