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Fake money scheme goes awry at school

A Land O'Lakes High School student is arrested after admitting he made counterfeit $20 bills on his home computer.

By REBECCA CATALANELLO
Published October 21, 2005

A 14-year-old Land O'Lakes High School student was arrested Thursday on charges he made counterfeit money using his family's home computer and scanner.

The ninth-grader passed at least two fake $20 bills to friends, one of which ended up in the Land O'Lakes High School cash deposit at Regions Bank, according to the charges. The teen's name is being withheld by the Times because of his age.

"I've been a school administrator for 14 years, and it's the first time I've faced a student who was home growing his money," Land O'Lakes principal Ray Bonti said.

A cafeteria worker at the school became suspicious Oct. 6 after a student handed her a crumpled $20 bill for a $2 smoothie. When she straightened the bill out, it was yellowish and the paper felt funny, she told a Pasco County sheriff's deputy after bringing the bill to her supervisor.

The boy who bought the smoothie told a deputy that he'd gotten the $20 bill from a friend. When he brought the $18 change back, his lender friend let him borrow $10.

Then the boy who bought the smoothie told deputies he'd seen his friend the day before throwing crumpled fake $20 bills on the ground to see if any other students would pick them up. That was in gym class, another student added. And, he said, the boy who had tossed the money also made it - on his home computer.

When first questioned by a sheriff's deputy, the 14-year-old suspect said he didn't make fake money, but said it was possible his dresser contained several 81/2-inch by 12-inch pages with $20 bills printed on them.

An investigator checked on Oct. 6 and found three sheets of paper in the boy's dresser, each with $20 bills printed on it, and one with a $20 bill cut out.

By this time, the boy confessed to having placed a $20 bill face down on the scanner and hitting "print," then reinserting the paper and hitting "print" again.

It was a theory his grandfather tested out in front of the deputy before tearing up the scanned result, which looked exactly like those in the boy's dresser.

The serial number for some of the bills in the boy's dresser matched the fake bill that was found in Land O'Lakes High's Regions Bank deposit a few days later on Oct. 12. The serial number of the fake bills in the drawers also matched one of the real $20s the boy had in his pocket Oct. 6.

"It's extremely serious when you start distributing (fake) money," Sheriff's Office spokesman Doug Tobin said of the money-scanning scheme. "It's one thing to do it out of your own curiosity at home, but another - a felony - when you start distributing."

Had the boy been truthful right away, Tobin said, his likely punishment would have been referral to a juvenile diversion program. But the 14-year-old did not admit he'd distributed the bills until Thursday, after Regions Bank discovered the fake $20. He couldn't say to whom he passed the bills.

The boy was arrested at home at 12:40 p.m. Thursday and taken to the Juvenile Assessment Center. Bonti said the boy has been suspended from school with the possibility of expulsion.

[Last modified October 21, 2005, 02:15:38]