Counterfeit money found on campus

Georgia College has seen its first-ever case of counterfeit money at the Business Office as of April 14 when $200 worth of the bleached bills were intercepted, according to Public Safety.

In addition, $200 in counterfeit money was also confiscated by Milledgeville Police Department and was later determined to be passed by the same person.

This brings the total amount of the counterfeit bills to around $1,300 since the beginning of the year.

“We had two (counterfeit bills that) turned up through the Business Office, same day, same person,” said Interim Chief Major Joe Grant.

Public Safety has already apprehended the culprit—a high school senior from metro Atlanta who was visiting a friend at Georgia College.

“He accidentally sold some tickets on the sidewalk in Atlanta, Ga.,” said Public Safety Chief Detective Robert Butler. “And the scalper gave him the $100s; he sold four tickets for 75 bucks a piece. That’s common up there, just about the majority of (counterfeit bills) are going to be coming out of Atlanta.”

The four bills, similar to the ones found circulating over a month ago in Milledgeville, were originally $5, which had been bleached and printed to look like $100s.

The money was intercepted after a student had paid fines for damages he had caused at Wells Hall. He paid the fine to the Business Office and then later paid a parking ticket to MPD, with the four fake $100s.

“I think that’s the first time our Business Office has ever had one though, it got caught at the bank,” Grant said. “All (the Business Office) did was the pen test.”

The bank caught the bills after they were entered as $100s and the machines read them as $5s, so they were rejected.

There is no law against possession of counterfeit money, the only illegal action is passing the money, but Public Safety said the student’s story checks out.

They department is asking the student to repay the money and MPD will determine what to do after Public Safety handles it on their end.

“It’s hard to say whether or not he’s going to be charged,” said MPD Chief of Detectives Captain Dray Swicord. “If he pays the money back, as far as I’m concerned, it’ll wash out.”

A few weeks ago, another instance of counterfeit money was discovered.

Three $1 bills were intercepted at Golden Pantry, which was out of the norm according to Swicord.

“If someone is going to copy money or go through the trouble to do it, usually it’s going to be some high denomination,” Swicord said.

Public Safety said they will be using one of the bills for training purposes.

“If you look at it, it’s easy to tell, that’s what we tell people,” Swicord said. “If people (look at them closely), you’re not going to see them as much.”

MPD said many fast food restaurants are not accepting larger bills to avoid the counterfeiting problem.

“With today’s computers and printers it’s just going to be something we’re going to have to deal with,” Swicord said.

Posted by Katelyn Hebert on Apr 28 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.