Police investigating rash of counterfeit currency

Local police departments continue to investigate an influx of counterfeit $20 bills showing up at local businesses and banks.

“We’ve had three or four in the past 30 days or so,” Jackson County Sheriff Michael Carothers said Thursday.

He said the county is

working with the FBI to try to track the counterfeit bills to those who made them and how they wound up at stores in the Brownstown area and other places around the county.

One of those bills was obtained from a person who reported receiving it from a bank, Carothers said.

He said most of the bills showed up when someone used one at a store, and a clerk determined it was fake.

“We talk to the person and try to find out where they received the bill,” Carothers said. “We try to find a trail.”

Seymour Police Detective C.J. Foster said counterfeit money tends to show up in spurts.

On Wednesday morning, city police were called to investigate the report of two counterfeit $20 bills at Dupont State Bank, 1725 E. Tipton St.

Also on Wednesday, two possible counterfeit $20 bills were reported at Pizza Hut, 1411 E. Tipton St., at 5:44 p.m.

On Tuesday, Seymour police received two separate reports of counterfeit $20 bills passed at local businesses. One was reported at Shoe Sensation, 1210 E. Tipton St., and the second was at Taco Bell, 1509 E. Tipton St., at 12:49 p.m.

This story appears in the print edition of The Tribune. Subscribers can read the entire story online by signing in here or in our e-Edition by clicking here.