Largest Counterfeiting Operation

The greatest known banknote forgery was the German Third Reich's forging operation, code name 'Operation Bernhard', run by Major Bernhard Krüger during World War II (1939-45). It involved more than nine million counterfeit British notes valued at £130 million ($520 million) in denominations of £5, £10, £20 and £50 beginning in late 1943, aimed a ruining the British economy with a flood of bogus notes. They were produced by 140 Jewish prisoners at Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

A plan to drop the money over London was abandoned and instead it was sent to Nazi-occupied or neutral countries to pay agents, buy gold and jewellery, or to be exchanged for other currencies. Some historians have estimated that up to 40% of the notes in circulation after the war were fake and that the Bank of England covered up the extent of the fraud. All of the equipment and remaining notes were intentionally sunk in Lake Toplitz, Austria, by the Nazis. In the last days of the war the inmates who worked on the project were taken to Ebensee camp to be killed but were liberated by the Americans on 6 May 1945.