“The police said the $100 bills were actually $5 bills that had been bleached and altered,” recalls L.A. resident David Lipin. “They showed me how you could hold them up to the light and see Abraham Lincoln’s face." (Brian van der Brug, Los Angeles Times)
After cashing a postal money order, David Lipin tried using one of the eight $100 bills at the gas station and was nearly arrested. Even the Secret Service couldn't help him replace the bogus bills.
A business inadvertently gives you counterfeit money — are you stuck with it? In most cases, yes. But what if that business happens to be a branch of the federal government?
Los Angeles resident David Lipin found himself asking this question the other day after he cashed a $1,000 Postal Service money order at a West Hollywood post office.
He said the postal worker handed him 10 $20 bills and eight $100 bills.
Lipin, 43, said he then stopped at a nearby gas station to fill his tank. He tried to pay with one of his new $100 bills.
"The clerk took a close look at it and said it was fake," Lipin told me. "Then she looked at some of the other $100 bills. She said they were fake too, and she called the police."
Alarmed, Lipin phoned a lawyer friend. At his friend's urging, he too called the Los Angeles Police Department to report that he'd been given bogus bills. "I wanted it very clear that I was a victim and not someone trying to pawn off some counterfeit dollars," Lipin said.
The cops arrived at the gas station and inspected the cash. They shook their heads.
"The police said the $100 bills were actually $5 bills that had been bleached and altered," Lipin recalled. "They showed me how you could hold them up to the light and see Abraham Lincoln's face. All eight turned out to be counterfeit."
So now what? The police took a report but said they couldn't do anything. They suggested that Lipin try the L.A. County Sheriff's Department, which serves West Hollywood.
A sheriff's deputy also said they couldn't do much and suggested he try the Secret Service. So did the post office when Lipin returned to the same branch that had given him the funny money.
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