Pair turned $1 bills into fake $100 bills with help of bleach and a printer, feds say
A man and a woman accused of spending counterfeit cash used a cleaning solution to scrub ink off of real $1 bills to try to turn the blank Federal Reserve notes into fake $100 bills, federal prosecutors said.
Before the two were caught trying to create more counterfeit money, they traveled from their home state of North Carolina with two co-conspirators, including a minor, to West Virginia and spent fake $100 bills at restaurants and gas stations on Oct. 12, 2022, according to prosecutors and court documents.
Later that evening, the group stayed at a hotel in Summersville where they bleached forty $1 bills before placing them in a microwave, court documents say. According to prosecutors, they had plans to make additional fake cash with the help of a printer.
Inside the hotel room was a printer, scanner, an empty bottle of “Purple Power” cleaning solution used to bleach the bills and “other tools needed to create counterfeit Federal Reserve notes,” an indictment says.
The man, 32, and the woman, 23, both of Lenoir, “admitted that their counterfeiting process involved bleaching $1 bills, scanning a genuine $100 bill and printing the resulting image on the bleached bills,” according to prosecutors.
Both defendants pleaded guilty on Oct. 13 to a conspiracy to commit an offense against the U.S., the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of West Virginia announced in an Oct. 13 news release.
McClatchy News contacted defense attorneys representing the man and woman for comment on Oct. 16 and didn’t receive immediate responses.
A third defendant, who prosecutors described as a co-conspirator, is scheduled to appear in court for a plea hearing on Nov. 9, court records show.
The minor involved in the group’s scheme is not named as a defendant in the case, according to the indictment.
The man and woman who pleaded guilty are facing up to five years in prison and will be sentenced on Jan. 26, prosecutors said.
They each could also be ordered to pay a $250,000 fine, according to prosecutors.
Lenoir is about 75 miles northwest of Charlotte.
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