Jules Cesar
Two people have been accused of passing phony $100 bills at Tanger Outlets in East Lampeter Township, according to police.
Police on Saturday arrested Nikole C. Koreck, 24, of Langhorne, and Jules Cesar, 31, of Brooklyn, N.Y., and charged them with using counterfeit bills at 16 stores at the shopping center along Lincoln Highway East.
"And they keep coming in," East Lampeter police Lt. Robin Weaver said of the phony bills. "So we could easily double that number. We figure there will be more than 30 stores."
Stores where fake money was passed included Izod, Naturalizer, Hanesbrands, Reebok, OshKosh B'Gosh, Yankee Candle and Gap Outlet.
Each suspect has been charged with 10 counts of felony forgery, criminal conspiracy to commit forgery and theft by deception.
They were committed to Lancaster County Prison.
According to police, the pair would enter a store and select merchandise costing only a few dollars. They would allegedly use a counterfeit $100 bill to pay for the item, exchanging the phony money for real cash when they received their change.
Weaver said police did not know how long the two were at Tanger before their arrest.
"We got the initial call, and our patrol officers did a pretty good job of locating the suspects," he said. "Then our detectives took it from there, did the interviews and got enough information to charge them."
Weaver said police believe the two are part of an organized ring, but he did not speculate on where the ring might be headquartered.
The quality of the phony $100 bills passed at Tanger was good enough to pass a routine examination.
"These counterfeit bills will pass the most common test, which is the ink test, because they're actually using currency paper," Weaver said. "They count on busy clerks using just the ink test, and when they pass that, then they're good to go."
Weaver said detecting the fake currency can be accomplished by holding the bill up to the light to see the watermark and making sure the color-coded denomination ribbon woven into the paper matches the denomination of the bill.
Sometimes a counterfeiter might whitewash a $5 bill, stripping off all the ink in order to convert it into a phony $100 bill, Weaver said.
"The bill will say $100, but the ribbon is going to be for a five," he said.
He also said the clarity of the printing on a counterfeit bill is not as sharp as on the genuine article, although he said it would take a magnifying glass to spot the difference.
"The edges won't be as clear," he said.
Clerks should be especially wary of customers who buy items priced at $2 or $3 and pay using a $100 bill, Weaver said.
East Lampeter Township police are asking anyone with additional information to contact them at 291-4676.
