Officials investigate 6 counterfeit bills

It's unusual to have so many turn up within a month, a police detective said.
By JEANNE STARMACK
VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER
AUSTINTOWN -- Counterfeit money has been popping up at businesses in the township for the past month.
Since Sept. 2, six counterfeit bills -- five twenties and one five-dollar bill -- have been reported to Austintown police.
The most recent case is from Tuesday. A clerk took a five-dollar bill from a customer at Countryside Drive Thru, 888 N. Meridian Road. The clerk checked the five with a special pen and found it was fake, a police report said.
The clerk told police she had been warned by another business owner about fake five-dollar bills that business received, and that is why she began checking for them.
Other businesses that encountered phony bills include Wal-Mart, Lucianno's Restaurant, Pizza Joe's and Cashland, according to police.
Detective Lt. Robert Schaeffer said it is unusual to have so many counterfeit bills turn up in a month's time, but there isn't an obvious connection among the six cases to make him think all the counterfeiting is coming from one source.
Schaeffer said two of the twenties had the same number on them.
But one of the twenties was an obvious fake; it was smaller than a real twenty, and the back was off-center, he said.
Schaeffer said he thinks that that the rise in gas prices could have motivated more people to produce counterfeit bills.
Schaeffer said Austintown police tracked names of who passed the bills as far as they could. The bills and the police reports were turned over to the U.S. Secret Service's Akron offices, he said.
He said the Secret Service would notify Austintown police if it appears there is a counterfeiter at work in the area, but if the bills came from outside the township, Austintown won't be notified.