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Counterfeit $10 Tesorería General del Estado notes

In October 1918 José Alvarez Garcia and his associates were accused of possessing $580 in counterfeit $10 Tesorería General notesAY, Fondo: Justicia, Sección: Tribunal Superior de Justicia, Serie Penal, vol. 110, exp. 26.

The interim Tesorero General, Carlos Castillo, reported that the fake notes did not have the ‘Gobierno de Yucatán’ watermark, were on ordinary paper and had been produced from plates made from photographs of the original and so less precise. Two of the notes (series D, numbered 0419074 and 1078491) were given to experts Armando Manzanilla and Marcos Ferráez, who noted the following differences.

GENUINE COUNTERFEIT
  Different paper
  Smaller in size
Engraved (por medio de grabado hecho en planas de papel) Printed from a cliché (por medio de cliché, es decir, impreso con un solo cliché)
On the face the space separating the top of the vignette from the bottom is larger  smaller
llena con un adorna diez en cifras Lacks any detail
Madero’s whole image is clear; for both the lines and shadows are well defined and perfectly noticeable to the naked eye, especially the eagle on the ribbon on Madero's chest lines and shadows are blurry, due to the imperfection of the drawing and the ink that was used
  All the letters of the inscriptions and the figures are completely different
The border lines are clear, visible and perfectly straight and parallel The lines are partially broken by curves that nake them irregular
Alvarado and Cintra’s signatures are perfectly legible Almost illegible
On reverse  
Colour is different  
the shield is of a perfect drawing, for the eagle stands out clearly for the purity of its lines and shadows hardly distinguishable because of the printing process used
  The character of the serial numbers and printer’s imprint are different
Colours of ink are good quality and fine colours of Ink are different and ordinary (corrientes)
  the procedure used was drawing and copying with photogravure to make the cliché, which served for the printing
The red seal which says GOBIERNO DEL ESTADO DE YUCATÁN is applied with a stamping machine and steel plates, making a perfectly clear impresión in relief The seal is printed, so not in relief, blurred and completely changed

 

Armando Manzanilla was a 35-year-old photographer. His evidence was that the counterfeit notes had been made through photogravure and plain printing. The counterfeiters had made reproductions of the front and back, taking a negative from the front and two from the back, and a collodion wet plate would have been used.