Poor-quality funny money surfacing

April 7. 2006

MARY AMES

Frontiersman reporter

WASILLA - A rash of counterfeit bills surfaced around town in the last week, but - most of time - the obvious poor quality of the alleged cash prevented cashiers from taking it in.

On March 24, someone passed a fake $50 at McDonald's drive-up window. Four days later, a white, adult female slipped another phony $50 to a McDonald's cashier.

This time, the cashier who accepted the money showed it to the manager, the manager called the police, but the lady vanished before the posse arrived.

The following day, Jessica Smith, 21, of Wasilla, got busted for trading two funny $50 bills for Mark Arntzen's real $100 bill. Wasilla police forwarded two counts of third-degree theft and two counts of first-degree forgery against Smith to the district attorney.

The funny money seems to be the work of non-professional counterfeiters, said Doug Sonerholm, investigator with the Wasilla police department.

&#8220It's mostly cheap computer-printer bills,” Sonerholm said.

&#8220But with better equipment, you can have higher-resolution images. Computers are doing a better job.”

The culprits likely are kids who know a lot about computers, he said, and the targets are stores with inexperienced clerks or other kids. The bills are printed on any kind of paper, and usually are crumpled up and worked on to make the bills look aged, he said.

&#8220I haven't seen anything with water marks or the color strips,” he said.

Kids with laser printers may not consider printing money much of a crime, but every time Sonerholm gets a report, he contacts the Secret Service - the federal agency charged with safeguarding the country's money.

&#8220Potentially, someone could be federally prosecuted,” he said.

While professionals with printing presses usually find it isn't cost-effective to print low-denomination bills, the bills floating around Wasilla included five-spots, tens and even a $1 bill.

&#8220It probably cost more than $1 in paper to print that one,” he said.

And, unlike professionals who work to make counterfeit money hard to detect, many of the bogus bucks in Wasilla sport the same serial number.

&#8220They are never going to take this stuff to a bank,” Sonerholm said.

In the worst-case printing error, the back side of a bill was upside down from the front side, but the bill was accepted nonetheless.

&#8220I don't know who that makes stupider, the person who made it or the person who accepted it,” Sonerholm said.

Earlier this week, Sonerholm had collected eight different $100 bills, five $20 bills, four $10 bills and one $5 bill, in addition to the phony $1 bill. The Secret Service has a Web page dedicated to telling people how to determine whether money is real or a well-made knockoff at www. secretservice.gov /money_detect.shtml.

But Sonerholm suggest people just learn how money should look and how it should feel.

&#8220With a little practice, you can feel a real bill,” he said.

Anyone with information on the counterfeit money should call Mat-Su Crime Stoppers at 745-3333, Wasilla Police at 352-5401, or Alaska State Troopers at 745-2131.

Contact Mary Ames at 352-2284 or mary.ames@ frontiersman.com.