Police snag counterfeit $100 bills
By Nick Hiltunen
Published in News on July 14, 2008 1:56 PM
MOUNT OLIVE -- Counterfeit money reports are common, but these have a twist -- someone is using faded $5 bills to print up phony $100s, police said.
The bills showed up in Mount Olive at various vendors, at banks and from citizens, Mount Olive police Detective C.J. Weaver said today.
News-Argus/Bobby Williams
Mount Olive police Cpl. Jason Holliday, right, and Patrolman Ben Loch check the numbers on counterfeit $100 dollar bills that have been passed off to local businesses in the Mount Olive area over the past few days. Some bills have also been found in the Goldsboro area by Goldsboro police officers.
Two counterfeit $100 bills were turned into Goldsboro police on Friday by a business on Berkeley Boulevard.
Using $5 bills with the ink stripped off defeats the most-used weapon in the fight against counterfeit: the pens clerks use to swipe a $20 for a visible assurance of its authenticity.
Because a U.S. $5 is legal currency, the pens fail to identify the bills as bogus.
"When you mark them with the mark pen, they mark real, because it's real U.S. currency," Weaver said.
"Every bill has been one of these two serial numbers, seven that have been turned in to me," Weaver said.
To look out for more of the phony bills, which could still possibly be on the street, look out for these two serial numbers: FL75184706B and DE55431741A.
Weaver said that it's easy to tell the counterfeit bills are $5 with the ink somehow stripped off because of other security features.
The detective said if you hold the phony $100 bills up to light, you can see the security strip that is normally used for $5 bills.
"You can see the security strip ... and you can see where the framing of the $5 bill is still on the paper," Weaver said.
The printing of the bills themselves is not perfect, either, the detective said.
"The color is a little off, but unless you're looking for that, it's hard to pick up on," Weaver said.
Weaver said that Mount Olive police did have "some people of interest" in the investigation.
The Wayne County Sheriff's Office had not received any recent reports of counterfeit money, Capt. Tom Effler said.
"We have had some counterfeit bills collected through different agencies, mainly in the south end of the county. I don't think I've had any the last two or three weeks."
Effler said he currently has about $100 worth of counterfeit on hand to turn over to the Secret Service.
Counterfeit money reports are quite common. Between the Goldsboro Police Department and the Wayne County Sheriff's Office, reports of counterfeit bills average at least one per week.