More Bogus Cash Found at CSLB; Probe Narrowing

Two new counterfeit bills were discovered at Cal State Long Beach this week, putting the campus at the center of a federal investigation that began a month ago after university plumbers found $1 million worth of soggy bogus money clogging a sewer line.

As a result of the new find, Secret Service agents say they plan to visit the university in the next few days to examine campus printing presses as possible sources of the phony money.

“This is more than playing around,” said Wayne Presley, a special agent with the Los Angeles Secret Service office. “You put two and two together and you have to wonder whether something’s going on.”

In mid-September, campus plumbers investigating a clogged sewer line climbed down in a manhole and found sopping wet $100 bills stuffed into a pipeline that runs beneath the campus.

While investigators had dismissed the earlier find as the discarded work of amateurs, Presley said he expects this new batch of bills--which is of much higher quality--to begin appearing soon at area banks and commercial outlets.

“There are bills of much less quality being passed out there right now,” Presley said. “It’s a good possibility that these are the same people, but that they’ve just gotten better.”

When the first batch of bills was found, authorities said they were looking into the possibility that the money was printed on campus. Now their investigation is zeroing in on the campus, officials said.

While acknowledging that some equipment capable of being used in the production of phony money does exist on campus, university officials maintain that it would be extremely difficult for anyone to use it for illegal purposes without being seen.

“It would have to be a late-night operation and we walk foot patrols all night,” said Ron Perron, field operations lieutenant for the campus police.

The most recent discovery was made about 4 a.m. Monday when a campus custodian came upon two crumpled $20 bills on a sidewalk near the university’s nursing department on the west side of campus. “Because we had the previous incident involving counterfeit bills he thought he would take a close look at them,” Perron said. “It was obvious that they were counterfeit in that they both had the same serial number.”

Presley speculated that the new bills may have been accidentally lost by their maker.

To add to the confusion, another counterfeit $20 bill--apparently unrelated to the first two finds--was discovered Wednesday morning when a seemingly unaware student tried to spend it at the campus bookstore. According to Presley, the bogus bill is part of an older batch that has been in circulation in the Los Angeles area for more than a year. “We really have no idea where it came from,” he said of that bill, adding that he had not ruled out the possibility of a connection between the three finds.

Campus officials, meanwhile, said they were distributing bulletins to area businesses warning them of the newer counterfeit bills, which bear serial numbers of A54782926E.