Counterfeit money circulates

Milledgeville Police Department investigates nine cases of bleached money

The Milledgeville Police Department is still searching for the culprits of nine counterfeit $100 bills that were discovered circulating around town early last month.

The bills were more conspicuous than past attempts at counterfeiting. They were $5 bills that had been bleached and reprinted to look like $100 bills.

“We’ve seen it before where they were just Xeroxing it on paper but that was easily combated by the mark of the pen, but then they started bleaching money and it’s not as easy,” said Dray Swicord the Milledgeville Police Department’s chief of detectives.

The bills were originally $5, so they still had a watermark of Abraham Lincoln instead of Ben Franklin.

“The pen definitely works on the bill, but if you hold it up and look at the watermark, that’s really the dead giveaway,” Swicord said.

The bills can also be caught at a bank because when they go through the counters they will still have the $5 strips.

According to Swicord, typically counterfeiters will use $5 or $1 bills to create their fake $100s.

“They’ve just come out with the new $100, they came out with new features so they’re harder to duplicate,” Swicord said. “But the problem with stuff like that is you can’t hardly get out all the old money out, and you have some people who are going to hoard money, so you’re going to always have old bills that are in circulation.”

The first bill was found at Wal-Mart and then other businesses including Maxway, Big Lots, Piggly Wiggly, K-Mart, Family Dollar, Golden Pantry, the Dollar General and one was found at a local bank. According to Swicord,  the bills were usually found on the weekends so the store could not take a deposit to the bank the next day.

“Most of the time what they’re doing is going in and buying $5 or $6 in merchandise and getting the change back” Swicord said.

Swicord estimates the culprits made about $800 in cash from their transactions.

Since the story ran in the Union-Recorder last month, Swicord said they haven’t had any more reports of counterfeit money.

“Once these (bills) started coming in, we got nine back to back,” Swicord said. “We haven’t had any since March 1.”

MPD is currently sorting through video surveillance from the stores hit by the counterfeit bills.

“I was spooked about copycatting, and trying to do it again, because it’s so easy to do. The thing about it is the majority of every business in town and even the bars have surveillance, it’s just a matter of time before we catch them,” Swicord said.

Quick Trick:

Does it feel real? Instead of being made from tree-based cellulose, currency paper is made from cotton and linen fibers.

The Snack Machine Test:

Most vending machines check for the magnetism present in the ink of real currency.

Ink Indicator:

Counterfeit detector pens contain iodine solutions that react with the starch in wood-based paper of counterfeit bills to create a black stain.

The Ultimate Lie Detector:

Take it to the U.S. Treasury. Their currency-analysis machines have 30 different kinds of sensors.

Posted by Katelyn Hebert on Apr 7 2011. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.