Dodgy Toonies from Quanzhou: How CBSA says it nabbed man with 26,630 fake $2 coins from China
Global News
The mystery began when a customs officer wondered why a Quebec 'card' company would want 12,000 'metal badges' from China. She opened the package and found ... 12,000 Toonies?
When the package from far away China landed at a FedEx warehouse at the sprawling Montreal-Mirabel International Airport in early January, Canada Border Services Agency officer Caroline Landry took a quick but careful look at the shipping label.
The customs paperwork accompanying the package declared it contained 10,000 “metal badges” from a clothing company in Quanzhou, the CBSA says.
Destination? A company called “Les Cartes Quebecois” (Quebec Cards) and a man identified as Jean-Francois Généreux from Sorel, Que., about 70 kilometres from Montreal.
Metal badges? Shipped by a clothing company? To a card company? None of it made much sense. So, Landry decided to pry open the package.
Inside, she saw no metal badges. Only six more boxes. She opened those. Inside those boxes, the CBSA says, Landry found what appeared to be around 12,000 $2 Canadian coins, all stamped 2012, inside plastic bags.
Why would anybody ship thousands of $2 Canadian coins from China to Quebec, calling them badges? Why all from 2012?, Landry wondered, pulling the package aside for further investigation.
What happened next saw the CBSA, with some RCMP help, unravel what has become the largest detected shipments of fake Toonies from China in Canadian history, according to sworn affidavits that CBSA investigator Jean-Francois Pinard has filed in Quebec court.
Metal coin manufacturing companies in China are pumping out thousands of fake Canadian $2 coins and selling them to buyers here in North America through online web e-commerce platforms like AliBaba, eBay and others, Pinard alleged in the CBSA’s sworn affidavits.
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