Is it real? Black Hills businesses sees trend of counterfeit money

RAPID CITY, S.D. (KEVN) - Over the weekend, the Rapid City Police Department responded to two different calls about fake money.

“We see it used sporadically, I wouldn’t use the word a lot, but we do see sporadic incidents of it being passed, kinda comes and goes,” says Detective Luke Lang.

Despite security cameras, investigators don’t always have a lot to go on. While counterfeit bills aren’t common in the Black Hills, the crime doesn’t always happen somewhere else.

“We have seen counterfeiting rings that originate here in Rapid City and we have seen money trickle in from other places,” says Lang.

Detectives only see a handful of these cases a month and encourage employees to take the extra precautions.

“When their accepting cash transactions to simply take a few extra seconds to when accepting the cash because most of the money we see is not good counterfeiting meaning they’re obviously fake and more times than not the person accepting then the money is probably just in a hurry, but there are a number of ways to identify the fake money and they are pretty easy if you take a few seconds,” says Lang.

Those ways include looking at it, feeling it, the pen test, UV light and putting the questionable bill up to the light.

There is no counterfeiting statute in South Dakota right now so these crimes fall under forgery, which is a Class Five Felony.

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