Haines sees an influx of visitors in the summer months, and local businesses see an increase in sales as a result.
Those businesses have seen a slight uptick this summer in customers using counterfeit money.
Haines Borough Police Department received two reports of counterfeit bills in the past week.
The police department issued an advisory Monday reminding residents to keep an eye out for fake cash.
According to the police department notice, the latest counterfeits brought to the station have been $20 bills, all printed with the same serial number.
Haines Police Officer Brayton Long said the fraudulent bank notes were very crude copies.
“These bills are not sophisticated at all,” Long said. “It appears to me like they printed them out, more than likely using computer-aided software and printers, and then glued the front and the back together. You can actually see where they didn’t match on some of them. And the serial numbers — I have three bills in front of me now — all the serial numbers are the exact same, and they have the same makeup as far as how they were put together.”
Since May there have been reports every month of businesses and individuals receiving counterfeit bills.
Several businesses owned by Haines resident Michael Ward have received counterfeit bills.
A fake $100 bill was taken in late June during a busy day at the Alaskan Liquor Store. A few weeks later the same thing happened at Howsers IGA.
“They do look a little like funny money,” Ward said. “In fact, one of them actually had pink, Chinese printing on it, which should be a little red flag.”
More recently, Ward’s employees have received a couple false $20 bills.
Although he has operated businesses in Haines for 39 years, Ward said he has received more counterfeit bills in the past three months than any of the previous years combined.
The people who paid with the counterfeit dollars it is likely didn’t do so knowingly, Long said. In many cases, counterfeit bills are not even discovered until someone takes them to a bank.
He suspects that the recent counterfeit bills ended up in circulation after being produced in larger cities such as Anchorage and Juneau.
However, there is one strange coincidence.
“I do have one bill that was received up in Anchorage recently and they didn’t notice it until they were actually into Haines. The interesting part about this particular $20 bill is that it’s the exact same serial number as the two that were reported in another case that another officer is handling. So I find that very interesting that it was generated out of Anchorage and it ended up in Haines and then we already had two here.”
Haines Borough Police Department has packets available with information on how to spot counterfeit bills. Long also recommends visiting uscurrency.gov for useful tips.
