Counterfeiters alter $1 bills into $100 to get past retailers’ chemical ‘pen’ test

GRAND RAPIDS, MI – After chemically removing print on $1 bills, counterfeiters – using digital scanners - printed an image of $100 on the bills to defeat retailers’ use of chemical "pens” to authenticate bills, an investigator said.

The counterfeit notes were passed as $100 bills at businesses in Big Rapids, Grand Rapids, Grand Haven and Norton Shores.

Three brothers, Charles Bradley Winston, 18, Demetrius Dontae Taylor, 24, and Derrick D. Taylor, 27, all of Chicago, were arrested in April in Big Rapids after counterfeit bills turned up.

Richard Zemaitis, a U.S. Secret Service special agent, said that counterfeit bills were used at several businesses in West Michigan.

Big Rapids police contacted the Secret Service in mid-April after fake notes were passed at at least four places, including GameStop and EZ Mart.

Charles Winston allegedly used a fake $100 bill to buy $20 in gas at EZ Mart. Then, a GameStop clerk, shown examining a bill on video, told him the bill was counterfeit, the complaint said.

The worker kept the bill.

On April 27, Mecosta County sheriff’s deputies responded to Jimmy Johns in Big Rapids Township. The manager told police that one of the men, later identified as Charles Winston, bought a sandwich with a counterfeit bill while Demetrius Taylor tried to buy gas at the Shell station in the same building with a $100 bill. When the Shell worker questioned him about the bill, Taylor left with it, Zemaitis said.

A worker ran out and got the license plate.

Police also learned that day that Demetrius Taylor bought a $15 Uber gift card at Walmart in Big Rapids while Winston bought the same at a different register. Both got $85 in change. Winston then bought batteries for $8.46 with a $100 bill, the investigator wrote.

Sheriff’s Deputy Thomas Tanner ran the license plate which came back to Derrick Taylor. He started looking for it and spotted it at a Dunham’s Sporting Goods. Other deputies responded and saw Demetrius Taylor buying socks with a $100 bill. It was counterfeit, Zemaitis wrote.

All of the suspects denied any using counterfeit bills, he said.

Zemaitis said that the altered notes "are able to defeat the most common method of detecting counterfeit currency, which is to test the paper with a chemical ‘pen.’

Records showed that bills bore the numbers of three different serial numbers. Bills bearing those serial numbers were passed 475 times, in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Missouri, the government said. The suspect were not linked in court records to all of those uses. Records did not say who made the counterfeit bills.

In searching Derrick Taylor’s Buick Rendezvous, police found two three counterfeit bills. Demetrius Taylor had two Uber gift cards in his pocket, court records showed.

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