Is it a counterfeit ring or one perpetrator doing some trial runs? One Tempe man said he's been coming across ripped up pieces of paper around his home, but it's not just any paper.
"There was a couple here, on the other side of the house, another one over there, one by the fence," Ryan Allen said.
He was was milling about his home when he spotted some funny-looking money.
"I picked it up and looked and it was printed on either side, and the quality of the paper feels real similar to a dollar," Allen said.
But given our recent monsoon storms, the bills were a little worse for wear, and Allen said he could tell they were fake.
"Either they were trying to get rid of them or they left them on the patio and they blew away," Allen said.
"There have been very, very few passes, successful passes, with those notes," said Kevin Rice, Special Agent in Charge at the Secret Service's field office in Phoenix.
He said they've seen the serial number on the fake money Allen found around the Valley and they're investigating where they're coming from. While he said these look pretty amateur, the latest in counterfeiting is a process called bleaching.
"They'll take a 5, they'll bleach off all of the ink on it and using a computer and scanner they'll recreate the image of a 100 or a 50," Rice said.
So how can you tell if a bill is fake? If you hold it up to the light you should see an image in the upper right hand corner of the person on the front of the bill. You can also hold the bill at a 90 degree angle and you'll see one color ink in the lower right hand corner; then at a 45 degree angle the color should change. Or get a black light. When you turn it on, you should see a security thread glow fluorescent.
Allen said he just wants to keep the funny money he found out of the wrong hands.
"Depending on the scale they're doing it, it devalues our money," Allen said. "It's not good to have bad money out there."
Rice said if you're holding a garage sale or doing any cash transactions on Craigslist, take those extra steps to determine the authenticity of a bill.
For more information, visit: www.secretservice.gov or www.moneyfactory.gov.
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