If you met Frank Bourassa, years would you NEVER guess that he is one of the most prolific counterfeiters in modern history. You'd more likely guess that he was a mechanic… which makes sense because that's exactly what he was not long ago. He once ran a brake pad factory, and on the side, he dabbled in pot smuggling. But in the late 2000s, Bourassa came up with a plan so bold and bizarre it barely sounds real: He decided to print his own money. Not a few fake bills here and there. He ended up producing hundreds of millions of dollars in counterfeit U.S. twenties, using paper so authentic and printing methods so precise that even trained law enforcement couldn't tell the difference.
Eventually, authorities caught on. He was arrested in 2012 and charged with multiple felonies. The U.S. wanted to extradite him. A decades-long prison sentence seemed inevitable.
But then something completely unexpected happened. Bourassa struck a deal. One so baffling, so generous, that even the U.S. Secret Service was left fuming. After producing more counterfeit money than anyone, perhaps in human history, he walked away with barely a slap on the wrist. But there's still one lingering mystery that's never been resolved: What happened to the missing $49 million?
Early Hustles
Frank Bourassa's criminal instincts kicked in early. Growing up in Trois-Rivières, Quebec, he was involved in petty larceny, drug smuggling, and grand larceny. He started a shoplifting ring in junior high school. This wasn't a guy swiping some gum and a Dr. Pepper from a convenience store – he turned it into a business.
Bourassa quit school at the age of 15 and moved out of his parents' house. During that time, he worked as a mechanic and did some car theft on the side, to up his cash flow. He opened a factory in his twenties that made shoes and brake pads, but he sold the business because of stress and anxiety.
He got rid of the business and set out to amass his fortune in other ways, like pot smuggling. He was eventually busted and sentenced to a few months behind bars, but Bourassa wasn't heading back to factory work when he got out of jail. He decided to make some money. Literally.
How much?
Oh you know… just $200 million in totally perfect US twenty-dollar bills. And actually, as we'll soon learn, maybe more…
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Printing a Fortune
But counterfeiting at that level isn't as simple as printing some graphics onto nice paper. U.S. currency is one of the most difficult printed materials to replicate in the world.
To make real money, you need more than a printer and Photoshop. The paper alone is nearly impossible to source: a precise blend of 75% cotton and 25% linen, embedded with red and blue security fibers, invisible chemical markers, and a watermark that's molded into the sheet itself during manufacturing. Each bill also includes a security thread with microprinted text, color-shifting inks, raised intaglio printing, and serial numbers that appear to be stamped, not printed. Producing even a passable forgery requires an arsenal of professional-grade equipment and deep technical knowledge—resources most would-be counterfeiters don't have.
But Bourassa was not most counterfeiters.
He invested more than $300,000 into building a private print shop inside a rented garage on a Quebec farm. His setup included a $125,000 Heidelberg four-color offset press, a second Heidelberg for test runs, platemaking systems, an industrial paper cutter, two platen presses for embossing and foil application, and a fleet of serial-numbering printers loaded with gel-based ink. He even brought in a former press operator who had served time in prison to help run the machinery.
Still, none of it mattered without the right paper. Bourassa spent months cold-emailing paper mills across Europe and Asia under aliases like "Jackson Maxwell" and "Thomas Moore," posing as a bond printer looking for specialty rag paper with "a few light security features." Most mills cut off contact the moment they got suspicious. But eventually, he landed a deal with Artoz, a Swiss paper company that agreed to manufacture sheets with all the key elements: a cotton-linen blend, security fibers, chemical additives to fool counterfeit detection pens, and even a custom watermark.
To create the watermark, Bourassa paid $15,000—routed through a Swiss bank account using a surrogate name—to a company in Düren, Germany, for a cylindrical printing drum etched with the face of Andrew Jackson. The Germans never questioned the design.ikeness.
As Frank would later explain in an lengthy 2014 interview with GQ:
"It was easy. To you, he's Andrew Jackson. To some guy in Germany, who the fuck is it? Some guy's face. He doesn't know."
Finding Buyers
Bourassa had stacks of fake currency, but moving it was another story. He refused to pass the bills himself and insisted that they only be sold overseas to reduce risk. His first buyers were cautious. One placed a $10,000 order. But as trust grew, repeat clients began buying a million dollars' worth per week at thirty cents on the dollar. Bourassa quickly recouped his $300,000 investment and was on pace to sell tens of millions.
Still, it wasn't happening fast enough. And he knew time was limited. Authorities had already begun spotting the bills in places like Florida and Las Vegas.
Getting Busted
In the middle of 2012, everything fell apart. A stolen-equipment dealer, who didn't know he was being watched by police, offered to sell some of Bourassa's counterfeit cash to an undercover cop. The cop ordered $100,000 worth of fake money for $30,000 worth of real money.
After that first transaction, the next day the undercover cop ordered another $100,000. Bourassa was going to deliver the bills to his middleman, but he got spooked. He started being more cautious, staring through binoculars for hours on end to make sure no one was on his scent. It was a lot of hurry up and wait.
But then it all came crashing down. On May 23, 2012, Bourassa woke to the sounds of men shouting, fists pounding the door of his girlfriend's house at five in the morning. Representatives of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police were standing there when Bourassa opened the door, along with a pair of agents from the U.S. Secret Service. They searched the home and found some pretty suspicious-looking fake bills and some of the equipment used in the operation.
Bourassa was busted, but the cops were under the impression that $949,000 was the extent of Frank's operation. What they didn't know was that nearly the entire $200 million stash was still hidden in a garage miles away.
Facing extradition to the U.S. and decades in federal prison, Bourassa realized he had one bargaining chip: the money. But first, he needed to stall. His attorney argued that the Canadian search warrant was invalid because surveillance footage had only shown Bourassa parking near the drop house, not physically carrying anything inside. A judge granted bail. Bourassa walked out on a $10,000 bond.
Cashing Out
In 2013, Bourassa's trial date approached. That's when he made his boldest move yet. He told his lawyer he could hand over $200 million in fake bills—provided prosecutors drop the extradition request, return his girlfriend's house, and let him walk with time served.
It sounds impossible. But to Canadian officials, pulling $200 million in undetectable counterfeit currency off the street was worth it. In January 2014, Bourassa led a convoy of police to a box truck parked at a rural hotel. Inside were pallets of fake twenties—neatly stacked, sealed, and ready for circulation.
He served just six weeks in jail and paid a $1,350 fine. To this day, U.S. law enforcement considers the outcome a major embarrassment.
Missing $49 Million??!!
After combing through his computers and tracing his transactions, investigators realized something troubling: Bourassa hadn't printed $200 million. He'd printed $250 million. That left $49 million unaccounted for—an astonishing sum, possibly still sitting in a hidden stash, or quietly laundered into the economy. When asked directly, Bourassa just smiles: "Maybe I sold it all. Maybe I didn't."
Life After Crime
Today, Bourassa claims to be retired from counterfeiting. He runs a consulting firm where he advises governments and businesses on fraud prevention.
Whether or not Frank Bourassa is truly out of the game is anyone's guess. But one thing is clear: he pulled off one of the biggest counterfeiting operations in modern history—and somehow walked away free… and perhaps with $49 million stashed away for retirement 🙂
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