Is Forged 2000 Year Old Coin Proof Of Ancient Money Laundering?

I just love this, to know they were just as corrupt (common people) in ancient times as they are today.

Since this was a roman coin, it might be the ancient origins of a mafia money laundering racket.


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www.archaeologydaily.com...

A Roman coin discovered by a cleaner was struck at the time of Christ by a forger who couldn't spell and didn't know one emperor from another.

Experts at the British Museum say the coin is a mystery because it is made from solid silver and probably cost the forger as much to make as he received in profit.
The British Museum has never seen anything quite like it and its rarity has pushed up its value from £100 for a genuine coin to at least £3,000.

But the forger got most of his inscriptions wrong. He crafted his denarius some years after the battle but had a poor memory of what the real coin looked like. On one side is a crocodile but it is facing the wrong way. On the other side is the head of Julius Caesar when it should have been the his nephew the Emperor Augustus.

Another major error can be seen in the fact he misspelled Egypt  he had Aegipto instead of the common spelling of the time, Aegypto or Aegvpto.

An examination using the university's new state-of-the-art electron microscope, the most advanced in the south east, showed the coin's content is solid silver. Rob registered the find with Laura Burnett, finds liaison officer for Sussex, who sent photos of the coin to the British Museum.

Sam Moorhead, national finds adviser for Ancient Coins at the British Museum, said the poor spelling "suggests the die cutter is not fully literate" and he said he was baffled why the forger bothered in the first place.

However Diarmaid Walshe a PhD researcher at the nearby University of Sussex has a theory, "Could we be looking at early form of money laundering?". Its possible the forger had come into the possession of sliver which might have been acquired illegitimately and the forger wanted to hide this. A classic way to convert hot or stolen property is to use methods that can clean it up and so camouflages its illegal origins. By converting the metal into coin form it would have in todays terms, "laundered it" and would have made it difficult to have traced it original source. In this way forger could have used the coins as currency which goes some way to to explain the mystery"

Thats pretty funny. But how do they know it wasn't some amateur just deciding to forge his own coin to his own liking? That would throw a loophole in their theory wouldn't it? Seeing as they said it would cost him the value of the coin, in my mind that says an artist that wanted to craft something of value to themselves.

Plus coinage back then was tied to the worth of the precious metal (usually silver) it was made of (unlike modern currency), making a forgery of silver or gold would still impart it with value. The article hypothesizes a forger might have acquired a cache of silver illegitimately and felt the need to convert it to coinage of the realm which makes some sense I suppose, although it seems like it would have been easier to make ingots.

The Roman empire had lots of problems with forged coins and adulterated coins. Forging a coin could have helped get rid of stolen silver; a piece likely to be recognized (and money is simpler to deal with than ingots. Just say "I found it.") Turning up with Aunt Sylvia's ring is likely to cause problems.

Coins were adulterated and forged because of inflation. The poor man's solution to their money being worth less was to melt the metal and mix it with dirt or cheaper metal.

This one's amusing because it's such a bad forgery.

The ancients were well known to forge their coins, both at a street level and at a government level.

Governments would decrease the metal content in their coins, hoping nobody would notice, in order to be able to pay troops etc with less.

No,it is only infact proof that someone from our time forged it,there is not a spec of evidence saying it was forged back then.