Burlington police are investigating what may be two separate incidents of counterfeiting. Lieutenant Darren Grimshaw says in one, somebody with a fairly good printer is just making their own money.
He says a lot of the money they’re seeing is just photocopied onto regular department-store paper. The Lieutenant points out that can be rather easily detected since it feels different than the paper money’s printed on, and clerks also have a special pen that will show it’s a counterfeit bill.
You can buy those pens at many office-supply stores and other places. You just swipe the piece of currency and if it’s not made of the paper that real money’s printed on, it will change colors. Business owners are complaining they’ve received twenties and fifties that are nothing but copies of the real thing, so he says it is a real problem.
But Grimshaw says another set of “funny money” has a much more realistic touch. The biggest problem, and the most difficult to detect, is the counterfeit that’s printed on real money. He explains they take a small-denomination bill, bleach it, and print something else onto the five-dollar bill. Many normal methods of detection won’t work with that kind of counterfeiting, and Burlington police are asking for any help you can give in finding out who’s using the tactic.