(Article updated on April 3rd, 2017 with the help of information from Frank Bourassa)

A fascinating story came out in the past year about a guy named Frank Bourassa from Canada who printed exactly 250 million in fake U.S. money over 5 months of printing. Before getting into counterfeiting, Frank Bourassa had a history of reselling stolen clothing and car parts and actual cars for business. A little while after all of this Frank thought about how everyone was crumbling to make money and decided to skip all of that and go straight to counterfeiting money.

At his start into researching about faking money he did a lot of research on the internet where he started by researching on Government websites which had tons of information about fake money and the security features that currency has on them.

These security features include the UV strips, watermarks, color shifting 20's (on $20 bills), color shifting eagles, serial number fonts and the actual feel of the bills themselves. All of this research took Frank a whole year to get all of this information together.

To make his fake money have a real feel to it, he used a variety of methods including sourcing out paper from a mill in Germany that he tricked into making the exact recipe he had duplicated including cotton and linen that is used in American currency, the Dandy roll for watermark in Poland and a Bank for payments in Switzerland. that made a type of cotton and linen that is used in American currency, with a cover story that it was being used for Bonds and stock trading company named Keystone Investment and Trading Co.

By doing this he could be sure that the cash had a real feel to it. He out sourced ink and security features from China to add to the bills and had various parts shipped to a Canadian town outside of where he resided in Quebec.

He used top quality printing presses to print the cash and set up shop in a location that had enough room to store the supplies, presses and printers. From that point he began printing big numbers of money like you would see in a printing press, except in this case it was being done illegally.

Only after printing the whole 250 millions of fake dollars did he go on to make sales in the black market which sold 50 million in all but 1 million was for selling $300,000.

Eventually, authorities which included the Royal Canadian Police working with the United States Secret Service got their first clue when Frank sold counterfeit money to an undercover agent which over time led to them shutting down his operation.

After getting arrested he gave the authorities $200,000,000 in fake money along with his printing press and got off on a deal in conjunction with his longtime personal lawyer.  He also spent 6 weeks in jail and paid a fine in $1,500 Canadian dollars after he was released.

At the end of all this Frank Bourassa solid exactly $50 million in fake money and got off with barely any jail time time and little fines. Frank is lucky to have gotten out with so little jail time and fees. If Frank had been extradited, he could have faced 60 years in prison due to manufacturing, possession and distribution of counterfeit money for 20 years each. His lawyer managed to half the extradition after 6 days through his work!

Check out the video below for the story from Frank Bourassa himself on how he got away with making $250 million in fake cash.