Artur Virgílio Alves Reis (Lisbon, 8 September 1896 – 9 July 1955) was a Portuguese criminal who perpetrated one of the largest frauds in history, against the Bank of Portugal in 1925, often called the Portuguese Bank Note Crisis. Early life Alves Reis was a child of a humble family; his father was a financially troubled undertaker who ended up being declared insolvent. Reis wanted to study engineering. He started his degree but quit in the first year to marry Maria Luísa Jacobetti de Azevedo, sister of Octávio Jacobetti de Azevedo and daughter of de Azevedo and Beatriz, in August 1916. In 1916, he decided to emigrate to Portuguese Angola, at the time a Portuguese colony, to try to make a fortune and escape the humiliations from his wife's family, due to their differences in social status. Before departing to Angola, Reis forged himself a diploma from Oxford University's "Polytechnic School of Engineering", a department that did not exist. He supposedly studied engineering sciences, geology, geometry, physics, metallurgy, pure mathematics, paleography, electric and mechanical engineering and applied mechanics. He started as a public employee in the public sewers constructions and repairs. The Ambaca affair In 1922, Ambaca, a railway company operating in Angola, was in financial crisis. Debt and shareholders were uneasy and the company's shares had fallen to a few escudos each. Alves realized that Portuguese government had lent the company's treasury $100,000 in an attempt to bail it out. He quickly forged checks from his bank account in New York and bought the company with them. While the checks were travelling by sea (a voyage that took weeks) he transferred the money in company's treasury to his bank account and thus checks were cleared even though he did not have sufficient liquidity at the beginning. He used the remaining money in an attempt to take over the Angola Mining Company. He was found out before he could take total control of the company and was arrested in July 1924 in Porto for embezzling the Ambaca money. He was arrested for 54 days and was released on 27 August 1924 because of a technicality; he blamed a criminal conspiracy for his arrest. Banco de Portugal plot During his time in jail, Reis conceived of what became known as the Portugal Bank Note Affair. It consisted of forging a contract in the name of Banco de Portugal (Bank of Portugal)—the