A Quebec man has been jailed after he admitted masterminding one of the largest ever series of shipments of Chinese-made counterfeit toonies in Canadian history, Global News has learned.
Jean-Francois Généreux from Sorel, Que., about 70 kilometres from Montreal, was sentenced to nine months in jail before the Labour Day weekend after he pleaded guilty to two criminal charges, including importing and introducing counterfeit money into Canada.
Quebec Court Judge Marc-Nicolas Foucault sent the unemployed Généreux to jail after a brief court appearance but did not give the man additional Quebec Court surcharges typically seen in such cases.
Judge Foucault also ordered the confiscation of 26,630 dodgy toonies that Généreux imported from a Chinese manufacturer in Quanzhou, China, so federal authorities can oversee their destruction.
The sentence was a joint submission by a Quebec Crown prosecutor and Généreux’s lawyer, and was accepted by Judge Foucault.
Généreux also received a concurrent 30-day sentence for possessing illegal cannabis.
Global News told the tale of Généreux’s arrest for importing Dodgy Toonies from Quanzhou last fall.
It revealed how some quick and critical thinking by a Canada Border Services Agency officer helped the federal agency nab Généreux and his 26,630 fake $2 coins from China. Some of the coins were intercepted at Mirabel International Airport and others were stashed all over his property.
Généreux has prior counterfeiting and fake documents convictions in Quebec courts.
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Evidence gathered by the CBSA in his latest troubles with the law showed Généreux disguised the imported fake coin shipments, delivered by FedEX, as “metal badges” on shipping manifests and said they were destined for his company, Quebec Cards, which was bogus and non-existent.
Global also discovered that Généreux has had more than a dozen other police arrests dating back to 2001.
The Sorel resident had been convicted several times for uttering fake documents and using or circulating counterfeit money, including twice in 2002, again in 2006, and once in 2009.
He also has pleaded guilty to multiple charges involving fraud, theft, identity theft, and mail theft, and repeated probation violations.
He has previously been jailed three times, including for 12 months in 2012, court records show.
Mike Marshall, an Ontario-based counterfeit coin expert, called the Quebec man’s sentence a “slap on the wrist.” Counterfeiters can face up to 14 years in jail under Canadian law, he noted.
“Why wouldn’t the government slap the result across the country and make it national news so people will be deterred from importing these cheap fakes from China?” he added.
“The government is playing this down, but it’s important. It’s our monetary system that is being undermined and Canada is doing nothing,” Marshall added.
Merchants who turn in fake toonies, or who unwittingly try to deposit the counterfeits and fail, are not compensated for them by Canadian banks.
Généreux is the second Canadian to be convicted following investigations into thousands of fake $2 coins that have flooded big and small cities across the country.
In May 2022, the RCMP in Toronto arrested Daixiong He, 68, of Richmond Hill, Ont., and charged him with uttering counterfeit money and possession of counterfeit money. The Mounties seized 10,000 allegedly fake $2 coins during that investigation that became known as “Camel Toe toonies.”
RCMP investigators learned, Mr. He made similarly large $2 coin deposits totalling approximately $80,000, or about 40,000 toonies, that were suspected fakes, making his case potentially the biggest fake toonie case in Canadian history.
Mr. He told police he got them from somebody else but that person has yet to be identified.
Ontario General Court Justice Amit Ghosh fined Mr. He $100,000 after he admitted to breaching two sections of the Criminal Code (452 a and 450 b) for “uttering and possessing” counterfeit $2 coins between Jan. 4, 2021, and Nov. 12, 2021, “without lawful justification or excuse.”
Chinese metal manufacturers of the fake toonies are selling them to people like Généreux for 5 cents U.S. each online and shipping them to Canada, CBSA search warrant affidavits and receipts alleged, giving him a potential tidy profit – if he wasn’t caught.
© 2024 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.
