In recent decades, government efforts to fight counterfeiting have been extremely successful, especially efforts to remove counterfeit bills from circulation.
Given that...
In recent decades, government efforts to fight counterfeiting have been extremely successful, especially efforts to remove counterfeit bills from circulation.
How can it be that...
Counterfeiters are not finding it at all difficult to get away with passing counterfeit bills to merchants and even banks.
Evaluate
There seems to be a discrepancy here because it's natural to make an assumption about the government efforts to fight counterfeiting. It's natural to assume that these efforts might involve arresting counterfeiters or otherwise making it harder for them to pass off counterfeit bills. This is a common feature of Paradox questions: there appears to be a paradox because the situation that's described would normally lead us to make certain assumptions.
But the first sentence contains a clue which indicates that this assumption might not be accurate: we're told that efforts to "remove counterfeit bills from circulation" have been particularly effective. These efforts seem focused on the bills themselves, not the counterfeiters. How else might the government remove counterfeit bills from circulation if they're not going after the counterfeiters themselves, or preventing counterfeiters from passing counterfeit bills to merchants and banks?
Goal
A correct answer might explain that the government's efforts are focused on removing counterfeit bills from circulation at some point after the counterfeiters pass them off. Beware of answers that seem related to this situation but don't actually explain the apparent discrepancy.