Tomball Police are asking local business and banks to keep an eye out for what appears to be an increase in counterfeit money being circulated in the area.

According to Tomball Police Department records, there have been four reported cases of counterfeit money changing hands in the city.

The four instances occurred between Jan. 8, 2010 and April 26. Two cases involved $100 bills, one a $10 bill and another a $20 bill.

IN addition tho those four reports, among those who have seen counterfeit bills come across their desks have been tellers at Texas Community Bank in Tomball. According to Branch Manager Dawn Capps, the bank has seen three since February, an amount that while may appear small, is actually alarming.

“Last year, we received one counterfeit note,” Capps said. “This year, we’ve seen three in three months.”

The majority of those who attempt to pass counterfeit money, both she and Tomball PD Capt. Ricky Doerre explained, unknowingly do so.

For example, on April 21, a young man purchased several items from a Shell gas station on FM 2920 using a $100 bill. The manager at the gas station contacted the Tomball Police Department, who in turn identified the suspect.

The suspect contacted the police station soon after and volunteered to give a statement claiming he did not know the money was counterfeit.

“Most of the time, the person passing the item is a victim, they’re not the creator of the fake note,” Capps said.

She explained that bank workers are trained to properly examine every $100 bill they receive.

“If the watermark does not match, if the presidential image does not match, that’s the first sign it’s a forgery,” Capps said. “If the strip doesn’t match, that’s the second sign.”

Another indication that a bill is a fake is to determine if the amount is the same as the money strip aligned vertically on every bill.

Each time the bank receives a counterfeit, Capps alerts the bank’s Bank Secrecy Act Officer, Walt Pinegar.

Pinegar said that the bills that have passed through Texas Community Bank recently all have similar forgeries. He explained that the counterfeiter is bleaching $5 bills and reprinting them with $100 markings.

“I don’t know how they’re doing it,” Pinegar said. “But none of them have gotten past our tellers. We hope. We normally don’t have counterfeits into that denomination ($100) because our tellers are trained so well and the paper is so poor, but this is a new thing,” he said.

Pinegar added that several Houston area branches have reported similar findings.

“If the big institutions are getting as much play as we are, it’s got to be rampant,” he said. Pinegar said he received as many as six reports from the Houston area of fake money.

After he is notified by each branch of a counterfeit being passed, Pinegar passes along the information to the Secret Service, which handles the investigation from that point.

Meanwhile, Capps is offering, to any business that is interested, a short training class on how to identify counterfeit money. The class, she said, will include instructions and printed material on how to identify the security features on U.S. currency.

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