STARKVILLE — It made its grand appearance last Friday night.

As Lt. Bill Lott of the Starkville Police Department tells the story, “somebody was eating outside one of the restaurants (in the Cotton District) and was approached by two black males who sat down and started talking with the victim” between 10 and 10:20 p.m. on Friday, July 10.

Lott identified the restaurant as Shaherazad’s.

Then, Lott, said, “One of the guys asked the guy, the victim, if he could make him change” for a $100 bill. “And apparently he did, and after a little while, he realized the bill was fake. And he approached them somewhere on University Drive, in that area of the restaurants, and told them it was fake and he wanted to meet somewhere ... later and settle up. And of course the guy didn’t.”

The passing of counterfeit bills is not a first for Starkville. The most recent case took place in the city in December, and in 2002, Nick Turner, then a first-year running back for the Mississippi State University football team, was caught using counterfeit $100 bills.

However, last week’s incident does stand out: “Usually it’s businesses, not individuals who’ve been approached,” Lott said.

Fake $100 bills were passed in Columbus businesses in recent months. In late April, a car hop at the Sonic drive-in on Alabama Street reported she delivered food to two black males, and the driver gave her a $100 bill that turned out to be counterfeit. In May, a black male driving a green sports car unsuccessfully tried to pay for a meal with a counterfeit $100 bill at the McDonald’s on Highway 45. That same day, a manager at SOCO No. 57 on Military Road, told police she’d found a fake $100 bill in her cash drawer.

Business owners cautious

In the aftermath of last week’s incident, some employees at businesses in the Cotton District were returning themselves to a cautious mindset, while speculation and confusion swirled at Shaherazad’s.

Oda Dakhlalla, whose wife is Shaherazad’s owner, Lisa Dakhlalla, doubted the story happened the way Lott said it did. For one thing, the restaurant has a policy of closing at 9 p.m. on Fridays. And his employees mentioned not a word to him about counterfeit money.

Oda Dakhlalla wondered if the victim did not make up the story.

In the four years the restaurant has been open, he said, “we never had this accident.”

“One time,” he added, “... I bought a pen — they said if you can make a mark on the counterfeit, it will show that it is counterfeit. It is in the drawer, but I doubt they use it.”

He would be glad to consult with his employees and speak with the police, he said.

Meanwhile, on the other side of University Drive, Helen “Jean” Ma, co-owner of Jean Chinese Cafe and Noodle Bowl, has been in the habit of checking $50 and $100 bills to be sure they are genuine. She uses a pen on a high bill, feels the texture, and holds it up to the light to find a strip announcing its denomination and a watermark of the person in the illustration on the front of the bill. Since this case has surfaced, she said she will be extra-vigiliant and check $20 bills too.

When she ran restaurants in Vernon, Ala., and Fayette, Ala., she had heard people talking about the circulation of counterfeit money. “But I didn’t get one,” she said. “Probably that was good.”

But Friday’s incident marks the first time she became aware of counterfeiting in Starkville since she began working here last year.

At Bin 612, bartender Jackie Baxter said she did not know how to tell whether a bill is real or not, besides looking for the strip of information running vertically on it when it is held up to the light.

Asked if she had heard about cases of counterfeit money being passed or used at the restaurant, she said, “Not that I’m aware of.”

And next door, at District Salon, hairdresser Pam Salmon had heard about the case of the counterfeit bill, unlike Ma and Baxter, but she expressed little if any concern.

“We don’t check for it,” she said. “Our clients ... we know them, and, you know, they’re all honest.”