Delaware - Two Dagsboro boys proved they may be spending too much time at their home computer after police charged them with making fake $20 bills, passed at their middle school cafeteria.
Four bogus bills made by the 12- and 13-year-old brothers were passed at the cafeteria of Selbyville Middle School between Sept. 19 and 21, said Delaware State Police spokesman Cpl. Jeff Oldham. The boys asked cafeteria personnel for change and bought food, he said.
Created with a home computer scanner and printer -- types were not disclosed -- the bills were not on official federal currency paper, Oldham said, but otherwise were described as "pretty good."
They were good enough to get past the lunch staff. But not Mercantile Bank.
"After three of the bills turned up at the bank, they were discovered to be counterfeit," Oldham said.
Employees at the Mercantile branch in Selbyville detected the deception and alerted authorities, Oldham said. Bank workers also told police the bills had arrived in cash deposits from the school cafeteria, he said.
The boys -- identified by school staff members and arrested without incident last week -- had each passed two of the bills, he said. "This apparently was an isolated incident," Oldham said, adding that no other students are suspected of being involved. They both were charged with two counts of theft by false pretense," he said. They were released into their mother's custody to await hearings in Family Court.
Police are withholding the boys' names because of their ages.
Counterfeiters often use copiers to create fake bills, Oldham said, but state police have not encountered any so young. "Very, very, very rare," Oldham said. "I've never seen that before."
No comments:
Post a Comment