Area law enforcement agencies are investigating numerous reports of counterfeit money.
West Point Assistant Police Chief Avery Cook said his department made one arrest Friday — Quenton Davis, 21, of 16 Redbird Lane in Aberdeen, who was charged with counterfeiting. He was released on bond Saturday.
Davis gave police useful information about where the funny money was coming from, Cook said.
“It’s coming from the northern part of Clay County near the Clay County-Chickasaw County line, kind of in the area of Una and Prairie,” he said. “He only had like $40, but we did make an arrest.”
Aberdeen Police Chief Henry Randle said about $75 in counterfeit bills showed up during the weekend in the town.
“We found two 20s and a 10,” he said. “One tried to pass it at Texaco but they caught it, and a couple tried to pass at the McDonald’s but they caught it. We got a couple 5s and another 10 or two.”
Randle said the Aberdeen Police Department, Monroe County Sheriff’s Office and West Point Police Department are working together after each department had reports of counterfeit bills in their jurisdictions.
Many attempts to pass counterfeit bills come during lunchtime rush hours for fast-food chains.
“Most of the locations have been restaurants during fast-paced times, during like a lunch time when there is an influx of traffic,” Randle said. “They try to tend to wait until gas stations are full to slip in and get the change back.”
When people make counterfeit bills, they take the real bill and photocopy a color copy of it, Randle said, recreating many of the details that make it seem real. However, a number of slight differences exist between a real bill and a fake one. Randle said a real bill has a second face of a president that a counterfeit one cannot recreate.
“Once you have the bill facing you, in the right hand corner if it’s a $20 bill, there will be another picture of (Andrew) Jackson or whoever is on the bill,” Randle said. “Counterfeit won’t have it because they don’t have the mint paper to do it.
“Every bill has that second face, and you can only have that face through the U.S. Department of Treasury that actually prints the money. (The face) is inside the paper.”
Another test is holding the bill up to a fluorescent light and marking it with a brown pen. The difference between real and fake is whether the brown color fades or stays.
“When you mark it, if it’s a real one, it has a tendency to fade out,” Randle said. “If it’s a fake one, then it stays brown.”
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