Counterfeit bills being found in county
By KATE SCHOTT kschott@daily-chronicle.com
DeKALB – Law enforcement officials are asking residents to be on the lookout for counterfeit bills that have been circulating in the county.
In the last two months, DeKalb Police have had reports of 18 counterfeit bills, Lt. Gary Spangler said Monday. Most of fakes are $20 bills, but there have been a few $5, $10 and $50 bills as well, he said. Most are being found by banks when they receive deposits from local fast food restaurants and taverns, he said.
"By the time they get the money and notify us, the counterfeit was passed several days prior, so it makes it harder to investigate," Spangler said.
While DeKalb Police are called sporadically about counterfeit money, it usually is just a stray bill here or there, Spangler said.
"If we get a lot at one time, it usually means someone in this area is purposely manufacturing and passing bills," he said.
It is hard to say if the bills are the work of one person, Spangler said. The bills that DeKalb Police are seeing are being made by a color copier, he added.
"They are not good quality but they are still being accepted," he said. "A lot of times, they are being passed at bars, when it's busy."
Other local agencies are getting the bills, too. Sycamore Police Sgt. Steve Cook said his department gets counterfeit bills every once in a while. They have received two counterfeit $20 bills during the past month: Both were received by a local bank that came in with the deposits for a restaurant in DeKalb, Cook said.
"The ones I saw, they looked like color copies and they weren't cut very well," Cook said.
Police recommend that those who encounter a suspicious bill hold it up to the light to check for a security thread. The thread is embedded in the paper and runs vertically up one side of the bill. The denomination on the thread should match the one on the bill, officials said.
Area residents and businesses can also test currency with a counterfeit money marker, which lets a user know if the bill is authentic currency.
But even that is not fail-safe. DeKalb County Sheriff Roger Scott said his office is working on one case in which two $100 counterfeit bills were deposited into a bank in the Genoa-Kingston area in the last week. He declined to say how the bank had come to possess the bills.
The bills were "washed bills," Scott said, or currency of a lower denomination that is then altered to appear to be of a higher value.
Those instances are even harder to detect, Scott said, because using a counterfeit pen will show that it is currency.
Anyone with information regarding counterfeit money is asked to call the DeKalb County Crime Stoppers at 815-895-3272.
If you receive a counterfeit bill
Do not return it to the passer
Observe the passers description as well as the license plate number of any vehicles used
Contact your local police department
Limit the handling of the bill and carefully place it in a protective covering.
Source: DeKalb Police Department
