4 Arrested In Greeley For Allegedly Passing Bogus Money
GREELEY, Colo. (CBS4) - Police in Greeley are warning businesses to take a closer look at their customers' money after four people were arrested and accused of passing counterfeit bills.
"They grabbed some cookies out of the freezer here and then they grabbed a couple of drinks and then they came up to pay," Cold Stone Creamery assistant manager Josh Fulenwider said.
Fulenwider gave two women about $85 in change after taking and testing a $100 bill that didn't seem quite right.
"It did have a watermark, it looked like Ben Franklin, so I went ahead and took it," Fulenwider said. "It seemed real to me, or real enough; it looked like it had just gone through the wash a couple times."
Two doors down Raylene Romero went from hair cutter to crime fighter. Two women came into the Cost Cutters shop saying they wanted to buy a gift card for a friend and Romero got suspicious, even though her money testing pen indicated the $100 bill was real.
"On the back it was washed and then it looked like it was washed, and then on the front one side was shiny and the other side looked like it was washed too," Romero said.
So Romero gave the change and then called police who ended up arresting four women in the parking lot for passing high-quality counterfeit $100 bills.
"It's fairly intricate and it is something that somebody would do rather than in their garage or basement," Joe Tymkowych with Greeley police said. "This is happening somewhere where people are understanding what they have to do to make the bill look better."
In the arrest affidavit the suspects told police they got the bills from men named Will and John, or "Dreds," in Denver with the agreement that the women would keep whatever merchandise they bought and split the change "50/50 amongst themselves and the man."
Police aren't releasing photos of the four suspects yet. Each is charged with theft and forgery.
"I'm just very happy that we caught them and we didn't get duped," Romero said.
