Counterfeit Money

You might want to check your wallet, because there is a possibility you have a counterfeit bill. Fort Wayne police and Secret Service teamed up to bring awareness to the city on the growing number of counterfeit hundred dollar bills. Officials say theyve been getting 3 or 4 cases of fake money each day over the last few months. Police say counterfeit bills are commonly used at gas stations, where a person can come and go quickly. Adam Dager, the Manager at Phil’s One Stop, gas station says they have seen their fair share of fake money. “We get one once a month. I think we do a better job than most stores do of policing it.” Sergeant Cleophus Jones, the Supervisor of Financial Crimes, says “Some of it is so identical to the real bill that even the secret service can not determine it until they sent it to the Federal Reserve.” Counterfeit bills are not hard to make. A common method of duplication is bleaching a $5.00 and reprinting $100.00 on top of it. Jones says “If you can not detect this money yourself, you are going to be hit hard with a lot of it, because there is a lot of it in circulation.” The best way to tell if the bill is phony is to hold it up to the light. On a one-hundred dollar bill you should see Franklins picture in the middle, and a shadowed image of him on the right side of the bill. You can tell it’s fake if you see the image of Lincoln on the right, instead of Franklin. Another way to determine if its real money is to look for the water mark. The watermark should run vertically and spelling out the amount. Jones says “The counterfeit marker pen is really outdated.” Phils One Stop Gas station says they protect themselves by scanning large bills through a safe. The government is working to make counterfeiting harder by using multiple colors. The Secret Service held a retail meeting in Fort Wayne Wednesday morning to educate local businesses on counterfeit money. Officials say taking a little more time to make sure the bill is real can save them money. . The secret service believes there are hundreds of thousands of dollars in counterfeit money circulating in Fort Wayne.