Artur Alves dos Reis, one of the greatest Portuguese criminals in history.
A century has passed, and Alves dos Reis is still the name of the author of the biggest financial fraud in Portuguese history and the biggest banknote forgery in world history.
The mass counterfeiting of 500 escudo notes with which Artur Virgílio Alves dos Reis he almost managed to buy Banco de Portugal itself is a relatively well-documented story, but one that not everyone knows.
Born in Lisboain 1896, the son of a modest undertaker, Alves dos Reis soon revealed an unusual talent for lying, forgery and improvisation. His career as a fraudster (his Wikipedia page even lists him as “criminal” as a profession) gains traction in Angolawhere he left in 1916. He arrived in the colony with a false diploma from a non-existent Polytechnic School of Engineering, claiming to be an engineer trained at Oxford and expert in practically everything.
And, who would have thought, it works: with unfunded checks, he ends up acquiring the majority of shares in the Trans-African Railways of Angola, accumulating a fortune that allows him to return to the metropolis full of desire to do more mischief — in the euphemized sense of the word, of course.
Back in Lisbon, he becomes involved in new schemes, such as the attempt to take over Companhia Ambaca, in which he uses the company’s own money to cover fraudulent checks. He ends up arrested for embezzlement and arms trafficking.
It would be behind bars that he would conceive the coup that would immortalize him.
In 1924, Alves dos Reis forged a contract on behalf of the Bank of Portugal with the British house Waterlow & Sons, responsible for printing banknotes. He forges administration signatures, manufactures official letters and, with the help of international accomplices, convinces the English printing press to print 200 thousand notes of 500 escudosallegedly intended for a loan for the development of Angola.
The amount corresponded to approximately 1% of Portuguese GDP of the time, and the notes, with the effigy of Vasco da Gama, enter the country through diplomatic channels.
With this easy money, he founded Banco Angola e Metrópole in 1925 and began buying shares in Banco de Portugal, trying to control the issuing institution to cover up the fraud. But rumors of counterfeit notes grow and the newspaper The Century dismantles the schemerevealing the existence of duplicate notes. Alves dos Reis was arrested on December 6, 1925.
This is what the Portuguese State itself reported in A Capital, on December 8th:
“The control of the 500 escudo notes exchanged yesterday at that credit institution [Banco de Portugal] it must be done, despite the number of them (…) making up the brutal number of 34,800, as 17,400 contos were exchanged yesterday.”
Tried in 1930, he was sentenced to prison and exile. He left in 1945, got involved in fraud again and dies brokein 1955. He had everything and lost everything, going down in history as the ultimate symbol of criminal audacity in Portugal.
For those more interested in delving deeper into this global legend of con, the deputy and leader of Livre, Rui Tavares, dedicated two episodes of his podcast, Tempo ao Tempo:
