Littlefield Police on Monday issued a warning about “fake and counterfeit $100 bills,” after several local businesses have been duped by replica money.
A McDonald’s in Littlefield and a convenience store both accepted the fake money by accident.
“It looks pretty real, but on it, it says replica. It says replica multiple times on it,” said Sgt. Steven Farley of the Littlefield Police Department. “Sometimes they’re easy to detect, other times they are not. They didn’t realize it was counterfeit until later.”
Police said, “The upper left-hand corner and lower right-hand corner of the face of the bill is marked ‘REPLICA.’ The lower portion of the back of the bill is marked ‘REPLICA’ as well.”
Criminals who use fake money count on others not knowing the difference between real and counterfeit currency.
“You can feel the paper is thicker and has a waxy texture to it. You see right here in large black letters, it says replica,” said Farley.
Besides the words ‘replica,’ you’ll also want to look for ‘Made for Motion Pictures’ and identical serial numbers. It’s not just $100 bills you need to be checking.
“We’ve seen the $5 bills and $10 bills because people don’t think, ‘no one’s going waste their time on $5 or $10,’ but it don’t take long for that to add up,” Farley said.
Littlefield Police have a suspect and they will make the arrest soon. Using counterfeit money knowingly is a third-degree felony.
