Cancun, Q.R. –The Federal Commission for the Protection of Financial Services Users (Condusef) has issued a counterfeit bill alert. Osmaida Santiago Leonel, head of the Condusef office in Cancun says there have been numerous reports of people receiving counterfeit banknotes in various commercial transactions between Cancun and Chetumal.
According to Santiago Leonel, they have received at least three official complaints of merchants discovering the circulating counterfeit bills in Cancun, and have registered more than 17 official complaints by Chetumal merchants.
The head of Comisión Federal de Protección al Usuario de Servicios Financieros (Condusef) says commercial establishments need to be aware of the circulating fake cash, especially this time of year.
With these recent complaints, Condusef has issued a public alert due to the circulation of the counterfeit bills. She says the exact number of counterfeit bills in circulation is unknown.
According to Santiago Leonel, Condusef has also located fake Mexican peso bills for sale through social media networks. She says there are groups on Facebook and TikTok where sellers offer “high quality” counterfeit cash for prices ranging from 2,500 to 5,000 pesos for bundles of bills equivalent to 50,000 pesos.
She reported that between January and September of this year, the Bank of Mexico detected the circulation of 224,390 counterfeit banknotes throughout the country. According to the Bank, the state with the highest detection of counterfeit banknotes are Mexico City, the State of Mexico and Jalisco, which account for 48.5 percent of the total number of retained pieces.
The Bank of Mexico reported that in 2023, the 50 peso bill was the most replicated, however in 2024, criminals have focused their attention on the 200, 500 and 1,000 peso bills.
Santiago Leonel says people caught using counterfeit money can face a term of 12 years in a federal prison.
In October, Mexican federal officials charged members of what turned out to be a currency counterfeiting network operating in the states of Guanajuato, Veracruz and Hidalgo.
In November, a second counterfeit currency network was detected, this time in Mexicali, Baja California. In that bust, police seized hundreds of thousands in both Mexican pesos and USD.
