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Continued from Part 1…
McAnea had a new print shop in Glasgow where he made menus for restaurants. To the police, it was obvious that the business was a front, and so they raided the shop in January 2007, discovering half a million £20 notes. The equipment in the shop was capable of making £1 billion (¥139 billion) a year, they estimated.
This time, there was no typo on the search warrant, and McAnea was sentenced to six years and four months.
In 2013, McAnea died of lung cancer from all the fumes he had breathed in from years of printing. He was 63. A career that began in tragedy ended in tragedy.
The ¥10,000 banknote
Today’s banknotes have a ton of security features that make them hard to counterfeit. Here are some of the features of the ¥10,000 note.
The center of the note has a watermark of Keio University founder Yukichi Fukuzawa. It’s not the only watermark: Hold the note up to the light and you’ll see three vertical bars on Fukuzawa’s left shoulder.
If you tilt the note, you’ll see two latent images: the figure “10000” on the front left bottom and “NIPPON” on the back top right.
And of course, there’s the silver hologram, showing a cherry blossom, the figure “10000” and the Bank of Japan logo, depending on the angle.
Next time you hold a 10,000 note, use this guide to see whether it’s the real thing — or a fake. (T)
This article was provided by The Japan Times Alpha.