Alves dos Reis is a great story. He managed to forge the central bank request to print notes, the notes were literally from the same printing presses so they weren't even fakes, as you mention.

I recently got hold of the book ("the man who stole portugal") and it's full of tremendous little details, like the notes being delivered by the printers in travelling trunks to the left luggage office of Victoria station. The whole thing relied on William Waterlow being spectacularly naive combined with Reis' skills in forging credentials and letters of introduction.

I think Albania is a bit of a special case though.

The crisis happened pretty soon after the fall of Communism. The country had not built up any the government institutions required to govern the new proto-democracy. As a result the government didn't merely fail to reign in the scams -- they actually encouraged them (presumably some government officials profited, which is why the people revolted).

The result in Albania should be seen in the context of other major post-revolutionary histories. It was worse than the transition in, say, Poland but much better than, say, the French Revolution.

The fact that the crisis happened to take the form of Ponzi schemes is just one example of the weirdness of history.