2 Arrested in Separate Cases of Bogus Bills

A Poway man was charged with counterfeiting Tuesday after U. S. Secret Service agents raided a small office in Old Town and discovered about $423,000 in uncompleted, bogus $20 bills.

Agents also announced the unrelated arrest of a Phoenix man for passing a bogus $100 bill in a Mission Valley department store--an arrest that took investigators to a Phoenix home, where they found $100,000 more in phony $100 bills.

Both men were being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown San Diego, each on $20,000 bail.

Various Stages of Completion

The Poway man was identified as Ira Marvin Dickey, 38, who had been under investigation for three weeks, said Stephen Sergek, special agent in charge of the Secret Service field office in San Diego.

Sergek would not disclose what tipped investigators to the case, but said a search warrant was served Saturday afternoon at a small, unidentified office in a larger building in the 1900 block of San Diego Avenue in the historic Old Town section of San Diego.

Agents seized $423,000 in counterfeit $20 bills in various stages of completion, along with negatives, plates, a printing press, camera, paper cutter, inks and other related items.

The bills were described as being of “fair” quality.

“Certainly they could have been passed,” said Joseph Perez, assistant special agent in charge in San Diego. “We’ve seen worse, we’ve seen better. These were passable.”

Most of the bills had been printed on only one side, he said.

Dickey was also found in possession of three counterfeit $100 bills, which he had not produced but apparently had used as a model in his own counterfeiting operation, Perez said.

Dickey was arrested at the scene Saturday and was arraigned Tuesday before U. S. Magistrate Irma E. Gonzalez. He faces charges of production of counterfeit bills, possession of counterfeit bills and possession of printing plates and negatives used in the production of counterfeit bills, in addition to aiding and abetting the other offenses.

In the unrelated case, the Secret Service announced Tuesday that it had arrested John Nash Van Dusen, also known as Orloe Hansen, last Wednesday after he was detained by a security guard at a Nordstrom department store in Fashion Valley shopping center.

Sergek said agents determined that the $100 bill Van Dusen allegedly tried to pass was counterfeit. He said they found an additional $12,400 in counterfeit $100 bills on him and in his rented car.

The investigation of Van Dusen led Phoenix agents of the Secret Service to a home there that allegedly had been frequented by Van Dusen. Inside they found more than $100,000 in bogus $100 bills.

Perez described those bills also as being of “fair quality,” and said agents assumed some had been passed successfully.

Van Dusen was arraigned last week.

Perez said the two cases are linked only by the coincidence that they unfolded within days of one another.