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Crime & Safety

Counterfeit $100s Still Cropping Up in Tosa

Two different women pass off $5 bills as $100s at Tosa shops

A barista and a shoe store clerk recently were duped by counterfeit $100 bills forged from $5 bills, according to Wauwatosa police.

A woman bought a $4.55 “snowdrift” drink at Tuesday, paid with a fake $100 bill, and walked away with a blended beverage and $95.45 in change.

The shift supervisor who handled the transaction checked the bill at the time, “but didn’t want to second guess the customer,” according to police.

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After serving a couple other customers, the barista had a funny feeling about the bill so she went back to check it. She discovered her hunch was right: the Abraham Lincoln watermark found on $5 bills was on the counterfeit $100 bill — along with Benjamin Franklin.

A few days earlier, at , a woman used a counterfeit $100 bill to buy a pair of boots. The clerk checked the bill twice, found it OK, and asked the woman if she wanted to complete an enrollment form to join the store’s customer appreciation program. The suspect declined.

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Wauwatosa police have to be on the lookout for the fake bills, which are made from bleached $5 bills that then are printed as $100 bills. The bills feel real, because they are made of real money. But the presidential watermarks and security strips that state the bill denomination – USAFIVE — cannot be altered and so can be used to detect the fakes.

The suspect descriptions in these two counterfeiting instances were not the same.

In other police news:

  • A 1994 four-door sedan was stolen from the 700 block of Windsor Court between 8 a.m. and 6 p.m. Friday, and turned up abandoned a day later in Milwaukee. The car had been stripped of its battery, catalytic converter and a portion of the rear license plate with the state registration sticker on it. The car was valued at $1,400 when the owner bought it two months ago.
  • A 16-year-old girl who earned a five-year ban from after she spit and bit a security officer during her retail theft arrest Friday was cited two days later for trespassing at the mall. 
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