THOMASVILLE — Oddly enough, the best counterfeit U.S. currency is not made in the U.S.A. About half of the funny money never sees a U.S. shore.

The best fake U.S. money is manufactured in South America. About half of the bills are shipped to Europe and other nations where the dollar bill is the currency of choice.

Perhaps 50 percent of the South American-made funny money enters this country via Miami, said Stanley Burruss, resident agent in charge of the Albany office of the U.S. Secret Service, the agency that polices U.S. currency.

On the other hand, about half of the real $100 bills produced by the U.S. government stays in this country. The remainder are issued to other countries.

Legitimate currency has serial numbers monitored by the Secret Service. When suspicious bills get into circulation, the serial numbers give them away.

A batch of fake 20s, for instance, might all have the same serial number. Each legitimate bill has a different serial number.

Counterfeit bills are proliferating in the area. Thomas County and Thomasville law enforcement officers respond regularly to funny-money calls.

Donna Langston, a Thomasville Police Department detective, has an interesting take on why counterfeit money is showing up so frequently. Burruss said she might be right on the money.

Some lawmen think crackheads are using counterfeit money to pay dope dealers. Consequently, drug dealers, realizing they have been had, are getting rid of the bills as quickly as possible.

Another theory, Burruss said, is that drug dealers are using bogus bills to pay for the products they sell.

The Secret Service official and Sgt. Melven Johnson, TPD Criminal Investigations Division assistant commander, have been in law enforcement 25-plus years. They share similar opinions about the biggest change in the counterfeit-bill industry.

Technology. Plain and simple.

Depending on the quality of the equipment, a counterfeiter with a lap-top computer and a scanned image can turn out money from the truck of a car, Burruss explained.

Several decades ago, skills and equipment were needed to make good fake bills. The work also required a lot of time.

Counterfeiters in those days did not make money often, “but when they did, they did quite a bit of it,” Burruss said.

“With the coming of the computer age, people are able to take computers, scanners and printers and copy almost any document, including currency, and they can copy it to a ‘T,’ ” Johnson said.

The creation of plates used to be necessary in the money-manufacturing business. Counterfeiters also had to know how to operate a printing press.

“Those were operations that just were not easy,” Johnson explained. Such skills, he said, might take years to acquire.

Capt. John Richards, Thomas County Sheriff’s Department chief operations officer, recalled a counterfeiter who was making money at home in the early 1980s — across the street from the residence of a high-ranking local law enforcement officer.

“One of the things lacking back then were the color fibers embedded in the paper,” Richards, a former investigator, said. However, he added, counterfeiters converted to laser methods that picked up fiber colors.

Laser-produced bills became so authentic with fiber colors, the U.S. government had to take new precautions.

With the exception of $1 bills, legitimate bills made beginning in the 1990s have features that make them distinguishable from those turned out by counterfeiters.

When a government-issue bill is held up to light, a security thread is visible on the left side. On the right, a watermark image of the face on the bill is visible.

The makers of funny money continue to fail in one area: the feel. Even the best-looking fake bill will be betrayed by the texture.

Some caught counterfeiters have used rather high-quality paper, Richards said, but apparently not high quality enough.

The sole spot for the production of paper on which U.S. currency is printed is in Massachusetts. The paper is about half cotton of various types and half flax. “There’s no wood in that paper,” Burruss explained.

In recent days, Tallahassee authorities thought they had a prime counterfeit suspect in custody. Unfortunately, the suspect slipped from handcuffs and got away.

Meanwhile, Langston said, people set themselves up as easy targets for getting stuck with counterfeit bills.

A simple, quick way to avoid being left with no-good bills is to use a counterfeit-detection pen. If a mark of the pen turns dark on a bill, the bill is bogus. If the marks remains clear, the bill is legit.

Langston said those who handle currency should be on the lookout for money that does not look or feel right. If a bad bill is discovered hours later, the bearer is long gone.

Counterfeit bills usually show up as 100s, 50s and 20s, but smaller denominations are proliferating. Counterfeiters have figured out that lawmen are looking for larger bogus bills.

Consumers and ATM users should ensure the money they receive is the real thing. Counterfeit money usually is detected by bank personnel, but some might slip back into circulation, the TPD detective said.

Counterfeiting is an old-fashioned crime that has adapted through the years.

“We find this to be a big problem in the computer age,” Johnson explained.



Senior reporter Patti Dozier can be reached at (229) 226-2400, ext. 220.