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Police raid closes down illegal coin mint in Taichung

On the day that a special government task force was assembled to fight recent high-profile currency counterfeiting cases, an operation was discovered in southern Taiwan that was minting phony coins, police said yesterday.

Police had been monitoring the clandestine mint in Taichung City since June, but had been unable to make any arrests as the factory was moved frequently.

Their luck changed when police caught one of the suspected operators of the bogus mint yesterday and seized around 260 fake NT$50 coins and materials -- including dies to manufacture every denomination of coin used in Taiwan.

A 59-year-old man was arrested at the site. He said that the minting operation had already made and sold bogus coins amounting to NT$10 million. He also said that dies were used to mint the newly designed coins of the Central Bank of China which are not yet in circulation.

According to preliminary investigations, the mastermind behind the operation is a retired banker who is still at large.
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