August 6, 2009
By ROWENA VERGARA rvergara@scn1.com
Police occasionally take reports about fake $50 or $100 bills — but not $20 bills.
Officers say the fake $20 bills that have been circulating in and around Sugar Grove since late July could go undetected when stacked among other greenbacks. But, individually, the differences are obvious.”As far as it passing for currency, no, it’s not even close,” said Sugar Grove investigator John Sizer.
Two women have been charged with possessing counterfeit bills in the Sugar Grove area, and Sizer says police have continued to hear about more fake $20 bills appearing throughout the Fox Valley.
On July 30, Shirley Ryckman, 39, of the 1200 block of Dorr Drive, Sugar Grove, was charged with forgery, accused of printing counterfeit U.S. currency.
On Sunday, Doris Adamson, 56, of the 500 block of Main Street, Elburn, was charged with felony forgery, police said.
According to police, Ryckman scanned $20 bills on her personal computer and printed the images herself. Police began investigating in July, after three counterfeit $20 bills popped up at a bank. Two of those three bills had the same serial number, Sizer said. And carnival workers at the Sugar Grove Corn Boil became suspicious when they caught hold of odd-looking $20 bills.
But not all businesses are careful to check $20 bills, because the denomination is so common, Sizer said.
“They’re kind of like singles now,” he said. “For this stuff, you almost have to be looking for it.”
Sugar Grove police have since been contacted by the Naperville Police Department about possible counterfeit money, as well as possible fake $20 bills that had been given to a retail clerk at an Aurora store, Sizer said.
How can you tell if money is fake? According to the Secret Service, counterfeit money can be detected in the following ways:
• Check the serial number. If you receive two or more bills with an identical serial number, at least one is fake because no serial numbers are alike.
• Match the portrait of the president on the front of the bill to the watermark that can be found on the front when held up to the light. The $10, $20 and $50 bills should have a watermark portrait of that same president to the right of his face. Counterfeiters have been known to bleach real bills, and change the denomination from a $5 to a $50, for example. In this case, the faces would not match.
• Find the security strip that runs vertically through the bill. The number should match the value of the bill. The security thread on a $20 runs to the left of the portrait; the $5, $10 and $50 threads run to the right of the portrait.
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At itestcash we recommend the easiest way to check if your bills are real or not, by getting a counterfeit detector. There are all sorts of counterfeit detecting products you can get depending on what you are using it for. High quality counterfeit detecting machines would obviously be a great idea for someone that is running a business where you come across many bills . While someone who works at a small store or deals with a small amount of bills a day, would be best off with something simple and useful like the counterfeit pen or ultra violet light to guard your bills.
But regardless of what you choose, we wish you the best of luck to remain safe secure in our troubled economy. Let’s hope that President Obama and congress can do something good to help us out of this mess.