Frankfort Police and the Secret Service are investigating a counterfeit money operation after a string of phony $20 bills were passed at local businesses, Chief Walter Wilhoite says.

Wilhoite declined to elaborate.

Employees at Kentucky Coffeetree Caf, The Brick Alley, The Dragon Pub, Discount Tobacco and Bryant's Pic-Pac reported someone passed or tried to pass phony bills last month.

Nick Floyd, manager of Kentucky Coffeetree Caf, told The State Journal a local man, Thomas Robins, was at the caf April 5 with a fake $20 bill. Floyd marked the bill with a counterfeit detecting pen, which makes yellow marks on genuine currency and black marks on counterfeits.

"Thomas was asking me for 80 cents earlier that morning," Floyd said. "And then he came in with this $20 bill someone gave him."

"A guy on the street gave me a $20 bill to make change and it was a counterfeit," Robins said, when interviewed on a Frankfort street. "When I gave it back to him, he wadded it up and threw it away."

Supervising agent Phil Noble of the Secret Service in Louisville told The State Journal he was unaware of a specific counterfeit money investigation in Frankfort. Noble, too, declined to elaborate.

Anthony Johnson, a bartender at The Brick Alley, said someone passed a fake $20 on April 11.

"I tried to deposit one at the bank," Johnson said. "It looked like it had been through a washing machine. I couldn't tell a difference."

Johnson and an employee of Bryant's Pic-Pac showed fake $20 bills to a State Journal reporter. The bills had a slightly different texture than genuine paper currency. In addition, they lacked a watermark of President Jackson and an inscribed plastic security thread.

"We started marking every bill," Johnson said.

Every $20, $50 and $100 bill received at Pic-Pac will be marked with the anti-counterfeit pen, owner Danny Bryant said.

Someone passed a counterfeit $20 April 12 at The Dragon Pub, 103 W. Main St., according to police reports.

Megan Ellis of Discount Tobacco, 616 E. Main St., told police April 12 she found a counterfeit bill in the cash drawer, according to the reports.

Counterfeit-detecting marking pens contain an iodine solution that reacts with wood-based papers used in copy machines and home printers. When applied to the fiber-based paper on which U.S. currency is printed, no discoloration is present. The pens cost $3 to $4 and are available at most office-supply stores.
Polyester security threads were introduced to U.S. currency in series 1990-1995 denominations five dollars and up. The threads denote the value of each bill, written for denominations $20 and under, numbered for $50 and $100 bills.

According the Louisville Courier-Journal, federal investigators nabbed five students of St. Xavier High School in 2006 for producing $1,500 to $2,000 in fake $20 bills with a laser printer.

Police seized more than $5,000 in counterfeit currency in a sting in Covington, arresting two, The Kentucky Post reported in 2003.

Other counterfeiting rings were broken up in 2002 in London, Harlan and Lexington.