Counterfeit $20 bills turn up at Lincoln restaurant

LINCOLN – Police were investigating Tuesday how about $320 in counterfeit $20 bills were successfully passed to a fast-food restaurant on West Broadway.

The bills, Police Chief Hank Dusenbery said, are of poor quality. They were due to be turned over to the local U.S. Secret Service office for processing Tuesday afternoon. The Secret Service is the federal government’s primary investigator of false-currency complaints.

The McDonald’s restaurant on West Broadway reported on Saturday having received the bills, said Officer Ray Goodspeed, one of the officers handling the investigation.

“All I have seen are photocopies of the fronts of the bills. They all look the same,” Goodspeed said Tuesday. “I was told that the paper used didn’t feel like an actual dollar bill, and the serial numbers looked the same on all the bills.”

Police have received no other recent reports of counterfeit bills being passed in the Lincoln Lakes region, nor of any counterfeit $20 bills recently passed statewide, Goodspeed said.

The most recently widely publicized counterfeits involved a handful of counterfeit $100 bills that came in to Aroostook County as a result of a Nigerian scam.

Several local banks and businesses reported receiving the fake money in early December. The bills were reportedly of high quality and passed to a Caribou woman. The fake bills were hard to distinguish, but there is an abnormality on the face of Benjamin Franklin, who is pictured on the bill, police have said.

In June, many Bangor area retail businesses posted signs in their establishments warning customers they do not accept $100 bills. The currency is being rejected at gas stations, convenience stores and sandwich shops, among other businesses, largely because of fears of forgeries, according to some business owners.

Anyone who might have received or has knowledge of counterfeit $20 bills is asked to call Officer Shane Hughes, who is handling the Lincoln investigation, at 794-8455. All calls will be kept confidential.