Fake blue notes found in Belize and Orange Walk

They are as useful as a cardboard box in a dory race on the Belize River…but fake blue notes continue to make the rounds in Belize City and Orange Walk. While one thousand four hundred dollars in phony Queen Betties were taken out of circulation this week, police have issued a public advisory: be on the lookout for counterfeit bills. Authorities were first alerted on Thursday after an employee of Grace Kennedy Belize Limited, visited the Queen Street police station and handed over five, one hundred dollar notes, which were not genuine. Company officials got suspicious when they noticed that all the bills carried the same serial number: C-B-4-4-8-6-0-5. The same set of numbers, which you see on the screen, turned up on a separate batch of hundred dollar notes confiscated by a mobile police patrol in the village of Indian Creek in the Orange Walk district, also on Thursday. Police Press Officer G. Michael Reid, says officers conducted a search on two men during which one of them, identified as twenty-five year old Jorge Gallego was found to be in possession of the counterfeit bills. Police in Belize City and Orange Walk are now trying to determine if Gallego, is in any way connected with the two sets of counterfeit money. Gallego, a Belize City tire repairman, has been charged with the crime of possession of counterfeit currency. The police advisory ends with a call to the public to check their money carefully and take time to familiarize themselves with what the country?s legal currency looks like.