Hamilton police Chief Neil Ferdelman and Butler County Sheriff Richard K. Jones said they are working with the U.S. Secret Service on pending counterfeiting cases.
They urged local businesses Tuesday, Sept. 21, to inspect currency closely at the time of sale, paying careful attention to a bill’s watermark.
This latest counterfeiting process involves taking real currency and “washing” or “bleaching” it to the point where the bill is sufficiently faded.
At that point, the counterfeiter prints Benjamin Franklin’s face and the $100 denomination over top of the real bill, authorities said.
Counterfeit detection pens commonly used by store clerks do not react because the bill is real, police said.
Sheriff’s Lt. Mike Craft said an informant alerted their drug unit that “washed” money was hitting the area.
Hamilton Detective Steve Rogers said in the past 10 days he has received four reports of counterfeit $100 bills passed at city businesses.
Three of them were $5 bills that had been “bleached” or “washed” and printed over.
Rogers said he held up three of the bleached $5 bills to a light in the department’s evidence room and the face of Abraham Lincoln was still partially visible.
“The faces should match up,” he said, noting counterfeiters are defacing older-style $5 bills.
Rogers said the bogus bills are often tied to drugs, but some times they filter down to innocent people who receive them as change during a purchase from a legitimate business.
He said the current batch of counterfeit bills are the best yet.
“If these people spent that much time on getting a job, they would be real productive people,” Rogers said.
Additional information on how to identify U.S. currency may be found at www.secretservice.gov.
Anyone with concerns regarding counterfeiting may contact the sheriff’s office at (513) 785-1300 or Hamilton Police Department at (513) 868-5811.
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