More counterfeit cash, police make arrests

They keep popping up like mushrooms in a cow pasture after a rainstorm. That’s counterfeit hundred dollar bills, and in their latest appearance the funny money turned up, not in a dimly lit bar or busy gas station, but in the cash drawer of the nation’s biggest financial institution. A teller at the Orange Walk branch of the Belize Bank reported to police that a week ago she discovered the bogus blue note among the pile released to her from the bank’s cash custodian. The original depositor of the bill is unknown, but the serial number, AC559325, matches that of counterfeit currency previously found in Punta Gorda.

And while the trail from the bank vault in Orange Walk may be cold, police in Belmopan have hit paydirt, detaining two men and a woman not only for counterfeit money, but illegal ammunition as well. Acting on a tip, officers searched a house at 15 Kiskadee Avenue looking for weapons. What they found was one hundred and fifty rounds of unregistered point 223 ammo, the same kind used in M-16 automatic rifles. The adult occupants of the house were twenty-five year old Joel Waight and his common law wife, thirty-four year old Farlin Bardalez. The counterfeit cash was discovered when police searched Bardalez’s purse and found a single imitation hundred dollar bill. When questioned she confessed that the money did not belong to her, but was inadvertently left over from a stash of ten identical blue notes she was holding for one Jermaine Fuentes of nearby Garza Avenue. Fuentes was quickly picked up and this evening all three residents of the nation’s capital were being charged with various offences. The bill found in the purse carried serial number AC613475, the same number appearing on several bogus banknotes recovered in San Ignacio and Placencia.