Counterfeit cash proliferating in region

Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2008

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They’ve seen a spike in counterfeit note circulation in the last few weeks — the infiltration of which is often sporadic and constantly poses a threat to local businesses, who take a loss when banks won’t honor them.

The Charles County Sheriff’s Office has investigated 35 cases of counterfeit cash to date this year — up from 17 in all of 2007. The St. Mary’s County Sheriffs Office reported investigating 22 counterfeit note cases to date this year. Calvert County Sheriff’s Office has seen an increase this year but could not provide hard statistics because counterfeit crimes are often treated and filed as thefts, Detective Sgt. Michael Moore said.

The St. Mary’s and Charles County total counterfeit cases equal more than half of cases referred by local police and investigated by the U.S. Secret Service — the agency that handles the nation’s counterfeit money investigations — for the state of Maryland so far this year. Some counterfeiting cases are not reported to the Secret Service, and when they are, local police usually follow up on them, said Tamara Blair, assistant special agent in the Baltimore field office.

The Secret Service’s Washington, D.C., field office sent an e-mail recently to local law enforcement agencies that the division has been ‘‘hammered” with counterfeit, bleached $5 bills, Moore said. The bills are bleached but the watermarks remain, causing them to mark like real bills with a detection pen used by cashiers and bank tellers, but they are reprinted with home computers as $50 bills. The e-mail included a document to show how merchants can see the difference between real and fake bills with their own eyes, mainly by identifying mismatched portrait holograms of presidents. For example, a fake $50 will have a bold portrait of Ulysses S. Grant in the center, but a hologram to the right of it, when observed closely, shows Abraham Lincoln. Counterfeiters are known to turn $1 bills into $100 bills also.

During each time period from January through June 2008, and from January through June 2007, there were just under 100 counterfeit investigations handled by the Secret Service in Maryland, said Blair, including ongoing cases that were not necessarily first reported in those time frames. The numbers do not include Prince George’s or Montgomery counties, which are handled by the Washington field office.

‘‘We take all counterfeit pretty seriously whether it’s one note or it’s a million dollars worth,” Blair said. ‘‘It doesn’t make the headlines every day but it’s an ongoing problem. The state of Maryland should not be alarmed. Inkjet is probably the most popular method because of the availability of computers and printers. It tends to be an easy method. We get all sorts of bleached notes, and all sorts of things. We have our agents go out and do presentations to keep the public aware. Upon request, we’ll often send someone out to organizations to talk about it.”

Local police departments take the initials calls from businesses and banks, notify a Secret Service representative to take the bill out of circulation, and then work with Secret Service investigators to try to find the culprit. Since each bill has already passed through many hands, it’s difficult to catch counterfeiters, except by using surveillance tapes or a Secret Service Web site that tracks how many similar bills have showed up and where. Some arrests have been made in all three counties only when suspects are caught with fake money in their possession or in the process of trying to use it.

‘‘A lot of times we will continue our investigation because our local citizens are affected by it. The federal investigators and locals can combine forces,” Moore said.

‘‘With our bank, there has been somewhat of an increase in them over the last couple of months, not necessarily the bleached ones but all kinds,” said John Morgan, administrator for Maryland Bank and Trust. ‘‘A lot of times they run in spurts. They’re coming in a lot more consistently now, not necessarily in large volumes.”

Of the bank’s 11 Southern Maryland branches, fake notes come up most often at the Lexington Park and Waldorf branches, Morgan said.

A recent bank alert e-mail by a Community Bank of Tri-County employee to local branches, obtained by the Maryland Independent, said the bank’s seen more counterfeit money than it usually does in the last week and warns customers and merchants to be extra careful when handling high-denomination bills, particularly in the Leonardtown and Waldorf areas. The bank suspected the economy was partly to blame, according to the e-mail.

Morgan said he has no doubt economic conditions are contributing to desperate measures made by people looking for hard cash by counterfeiting notes, and even falling for counterfeit checks from overseas scammers, six or seven he said are brought to the banks each month.

‘‘The cases we’ve worked do not appear to be connected to any current economic conditions — the counterfeiters have just found various ways to get around the system. Fortunately, our detectives have made some arrests in these types of cases in the past. Our detectives have worked with [the Secret Service] but none of the cases has led to any major counterfeiters — they’ve led to local people usually involved in other types of fraud and retail crimes,” said Kristen Timko, Charles County Sheriff’s Office public information officer.

Jim DiMisa, Community Bank’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, said his bank’s e-mail alert was precautionary.

‘‘That’s just something that is good prudence on our part. We’ve had three instances of three individual bills in the last week or so. That’s more than normal. We rarely get them but it’s not such a rash of money that we’re dealing with here. I don’t know if that’s a trend,” DiMisa said.

‘‘It runs hot and cold,” Moore said. ‘‘I haven’t seen a counterfeit bill in 30 days. When they start showing up, I may get two or three a week. Because whoever’s passing them can’t keep passing around in Calvert County because then they’ll get caught.”

DiMisa agreed. He said before the last week, the bank’s 10 locations hadn’t seen a counterfeit note in months.

County First Bank employee Patsy Finch said the bank’s six Southern Maryland locations have not seen a recent spike, but have seen their fair share of counterfeit money.

St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Office public information officer Cindy Allen said police took a complaint over the weekend for two counterfeit $20 bills deposited at County First Bank, deposited by a man who said he received them as payment for goods at his produce stand in Pennsylvania.

‘‘I don’t think we can over-publicize enough that counterfeit checks and scams are being inundated in this area,” Morgan said.

All of the above-mentioned banks said counterfeit notes come almost always from business deposits versus individuals.

‘‘We rarely get a customer coming in over the counter. There’s very few that slip through us that we don’t detect. With this bleached one, the paper is going to be good and you use your marker, and it would test that it’s genuine. We have some currency counters that are fairly good at detecting it. Most counterfeit are in 20s, then 100s,” Morgan said.

‘‘Comparatively speaking, I think it’s been about the same as last year. It’s definitely something that the local businesses should be aware of but I don’t know if we’ve seen a huge influx. It is a huge problem, especially for the mom-and-pop stores that aren’t as sophisticated as the banks and other stores,” Allen said.

Morgan said the bills come often from liquor stores, gas stations and fast-food restaurants.

‘‘It’s always a concern that you’ll get counterfeit money. We work hand in hand with the bank so they’ll be on the look out for us,” Ginny Crane, owner of Big B Liquors in Bryans Road, who trains her employees to look for Federal Reserve-implanted strips in bills and holograms. ‘‘We constantly remind each other and every time we get a new cashier we train them on this. For us, it’s really important because it’s part of our revenue stream. We want to make sure we’re checking the money. With the printers these days, some of this money looks totally real, and that’s why you have to rely on your hands, your touch.”