The Effects Of The 1925 Portuguese Bank Note Crisis

On 5 December 1925, the ‘Portuguese Bank Note Bubble’ burst. The Lisbon daily newspaper, O Século (The Century), revealed the swindle in the headline ‘O Pais em Crise’ (The Country in Crisis). The article describes how twenty-eight year old white-collar worker, Artur Virgilio Alves Reis, had deceived civil servants both abroad and in Portugal, convinced the English security printing company Waterlow and Sons that he was a representative of the Bank of Portugal, and created his own bank through which he concealed over £3m in counterfeit money.[...]