Counterfeit Money 

If you have been charged for possessing a counterfeit money, that would be a criminal offence under Commonwealth’s act (Currency Act 1981, section 9(1)(a)), not under Queensland State act.

Unlike other offences, if you were found with counterfeit money, it would be your obligation to prove that you did not know it was counterfeit money or that it was not under your possession or it was too hard for your to detect it as counterfeit money or it is too obvious that the it was a fake (such as monopoly money). You need to understand the meaning of “Possession”, you can be in possession of someone else’s belongings.

In that act it says, “have in his or her possession counterfeit money (not being an excepted counterfeit coin), knowing it to be counterfeit money”. Not being an expected counterfeit coin means, if the item which appears to be counterfeit it is so obvious to be fake, that would not be considered an offence under the act. 

Counterfeit credit card

A counterfeit credit card case, Pulinggam v R (Cth) [2006] NSWCCA 145

“… they were found to contain 2250 cards purporting to be visitor passes on which there were adhesive labels. When the adhesive labels were removed, cards having at least some of the characteristics of credit cards were revealed.”

His Honour stated,

“I consider that the cards imported by the appellant were not capable of being found to be “counterfeit credit cards”. In my opinion, such a conclusion is assisted by the dictionary definitions of “counterfeit”, the absence of any extended definition, or any definition, of “counterfeit” in the Customs Act and the degree of caution which I consider courts still exercise in holding that statutes creating offences apply to conduct not clearly within their terms.”

The interesting part for me is, defence counsel has argued that those cards are not Visa Credit Card either as per the Business Development Manager for Visa International in Australia.