A College Station man is accused of getting $760 dollars of counterfeit money past employees of the city and county jails.
According to the arrest report, College Station Police took 22 year old Moses Long to the city jail May 12th on unrelated charges. Long had $843.13 when he was held in the city jail and the money followed him when he was transported to the Brazos County jail.
Sheriff Chris Kirk says Long received a jail-issued debit card when he was released on bond. Three days later, when the cash was being prepared for a bank deposit, that’s when it was discovered Long had 38 counterfeit $20 bills. And a check of the debit card showed a zero balance.
Long was arrested Sunday on the new charges and as of Monday remained jailed in lieu of $8,000 bond.
According to the arrest report, a College Station detective believes it was Long’s intent to pass out the counterfeit money in the Northgate district, where the first arrest was made.
Kirk says “on the face, a single bill would probably not be scrutinized enough to catch it” as counterfeit. The sheriff added, “Each bill looked fairly good but collectively upon closer examination it was clearly counterfeit. Our clerk who was making the deposit discovered it because the bills were slightly different in size and they didn’t stack like they should.”
The CSPD detective, according to the arrest report, said “Of the 38 bills they had only two serial numbers between them. One of the serial numbered bills had the number 22 written in pencil on one edge. This handwritten number was copied on all of the 17 bills with the same serial number. None of the bills had a security thread or color shifting ink and the overall appearance of the bills was that they were darker than a standard note. The paper used was a linen style of paper which gave the bills a similar feel to a genuine US note, but they still had an obviously different feel from an original. Some of the notes were not cut properly, leaving some of the unprinted edges of the paper exposed.”
Kirk says of the first ever incident of this type,”You don’t expect to see that in a jail. And so it kind of woke us up and we’re gonna make sure that we check a little closer and just be ever vigilant.”
Sheriff Chris Kirk visits with WTAW’s Bill Oliver.