W hat appear to be stacks of euros peek out of black envelopes, their distinctive holographic foil demarcating the green, blue and orange bank notes of the European Union. “Discover what everyone’s talking about,” reads the ad’s tagline, which ran on TikTok in October.

Other ads run by the account are less coy about what’s on offer. “Fake money looks real but can you spot the difference,” reads the text in another video. In another, an AI-generated video of a teenage boy who looks like the star of a Pixar movie uses fake cash to buy an iPhone at an Apple store.

These ads direct users to a Telegram account that offers a menu of fraudulent bills, in five, 20 and 50 euro increments. The account boasts that its counterfeit tender can “pass all the security tests,” including the ultra-violet scanners now used by many stores to spot fake notes. It even offers a discount code: “10% off: TikTok10.”

These are just some of a deluge of ads served to a TikTok account operated by Forbes over the last three months from more than 54 TikTok accounts promoting the sale of counterfeit euros and British pounds, with a handful offering American dollar bills. The ads largely direct users off platform, where orders are taken and payment is made in private Telegram groups.

Trying to pass off counterfeit notes as legal tender is illegal, and can earn a prison sentence of up to 10 years in some countries. “Prop” money used in movie or TV productions is legal, but the holographic stickers and foils used to make such props look more convincing can also be illegal to possess.

In terms of raw numbers, the 54 accounts Forbes found are a drop in the vast TikTok bucket, where over 100 million videos are uploaded a day. But the nature of TikTok’s powerful algorithm means that a user who interacts with one such ad is funneled more and more.

Forbes revealed earlier this month that TikTok quietly gutted its rules to police advertisers last year. That has opened the door to a black advertising market on the social network for fake GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, experimental Chinese peptides, knockoff luxury handbags and scams where people order goods that never arrive. (The company disputed the reporting.)

Got a tip about TikTok? Reach out to Iain Martin at +1 (646) 739-6427 on Signal or iain.martin@forbes.com, or Katharine Schwab at kschwab.11 on Signal or kschwab@forbes.com.

Counterfeit products also now fall into a gray area, where running ads for them doesn’t result in an immediate suspension unless the advertiser is impersonating a big brand, according to multiple sources and internal documents seen by Forbes .

But fake cash crosses a line. TikTok’s publicly stated content rules says that it will take down individual posts related to counterfeit currency. TikTok’s community guidelines, which govern user-generated videos, ban “trading fake currency.” Its rules for advertisers also prohibit content involving forgery and counterfeiting.

TikTok said it had banned the accounts identified by Forbes and that such content was a breach of its rules for both users and advertisers. The company said that its AI and human moderators removed 16 million advertiser accounts for breaking its rules in the first quarter of 2026, and that around 99.8% were removed before users could report them.

Forbes also reached out to Telegram for comment with a list of messaging app accounts facilitating the sale of counterfeit currency on TikTok. While Telegram did not respond, its own content and advertising guidelines bar illegal content and specifically counterfeit currency.

TikTok’s primary business model is advertising. It rakes in money on every ad run on its app. The Beijing, China-based company was reported to have made $200 billion in revenue last year.

Many of the advertisers that targeted the Forbes account with counterfeit cash ads were not visible in TikTok’s ad library, the company’s compendium of ads that run in the U.K. and Europe. Others had videos removed for unspecified “content violations,” but continued to buy new ads related to counterfeit cash. TikTok advertisers can run as many ads as they want that violate content restrictions, as long as they don’t run afoul of one of the company’s few red-line policies that result in an immediate ban, Forbes reported earlier this month.

TikTok said that when ads violate its policies, it is required by the European Union’s Digital Services Act to remove the ad content and the advertiser name from its library. But many of these ads did not appear in the library on the same day they were served to the Forbes account.

"They are good. If you got one in your change in the shop you wouldn’t know." Detective Constable Daryl Fryatt with the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit at the City of London Police.

The surge in TikTok accounts hawking counterfeit cash comes as the amount of fake bank notes detected in the U.K. has skyrocketed. The Bank of England reported that the number of counterfeit pounds removed from circulation last year more than doubled to 200,000 from 99,000 in 2024, with the face value of those notes leaping to $3.9 million. A new wave of counterfeiters is buying “prop” money from China-based factories, then using social media and e-commerce websites to sell bundles of fake cash, according to reporting in British newspapers The Telegraph and The Sun .

On the continent, Europol, which coordinates cross-border investigations, reported that police seized $1.3 billion in counterfeit notes in an operation late last year, after seizing $73 million in a separate investigation earlier in 2025. Europol has said it intercepted $15.6 million in “prop” money in 2024. In February, the European Central Bank said it had found 444,000 counterfeit notes in circulation last year.

“They are good. If you got one in your change in the shop you wouldn’t know,” says Detective Constable Daryl Fryatt with the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit at the City of London Police. “You would have to really look at it and see the repeat serial numbers.”

Counterfeiters used to operate their own printing presses but now are often buying hiqh-quality fakes from Chinese factories, Fryatt says. The fake notes often feature security measures like the transparent holographic foils that feature on the modern British pound. “So long as the printing press in China is selling prop money, they can’t be prosecuted by the Chinese authorities,” Fryatt says. “Then they will send out the holographic foils separately here and let the person apply them to the note.”

There are dozens of prop money sellers operating on e-commerce websites like Amazon, eBay, Etsy and Alibaba, where the notes are deliberately marked as fake. Still, in January, Alibaba published an apparently AI-written book titled, “Buying guide: How to Choose the Best 20 GBP Hologram Stickers.” Alibaba did not respond to a comment request.

It’s hard to track just how many counterfeiters are operating on social media. Searches for “prop money” and “movie money” in Meta and YouTube’s ad libraries bring up a handful of ads paid for by Los Angeles, California-based Prop Money Inc. That’s a legitimate Hollywood supplier, which has had its fake cash appear in hit films like Ryan Coogler’s Sinners , rap videos and Super Bowl performances.

The same searches generate over 116 million results in TikTok’s ad library. The results appear largely unrelated to “prop money” and feature ads from big companies like Shopify and Electronic Arts.

TikTok’s ad library, which it has run since 2023, is a murky place that’s gotten the company in trouble with regulators. In May 2025, the European Commission issued a preliminary ruling that ByteDance had breached the powerful Digital Services Act because TikTok’s ad library couldn’t be searched “comprehensively.” ByteDance agreed to provide full context on ads within 24 hours of them running, and beef up its search.

Even when advertisers do run afoul of its remaining zero-tolerance policies — such as illegal drugs — TikTok struggles with enforcement. Forbes reported in August that the app was running paid ads from 27 accounts pushing the sale of cocaine, opioids and benzos like Xanax. TikTok said at the time it had banned all the accounts involved.

But thanks to the algorithm, new ads from other accounts pushing both drugs and counterfeit money continue to appear on the app. In the week after Forbes contacted TikTok about its counterfeit cash problem, seven new accounts that advertised fake money popped up in the feed. TikTok deleted four of the accounts when contacted by Forbes . Three remain active at the time of publication.

Katharine Schwab contributed reporting.