John Jernigan was arrested and charged with thirteen counts of uttering a counterfeit bill

May 20, 2014 14:26 GMT  ·  By
John Jernigan was arrested and charged with thirteen counts of uttering a counterfeit bill
   John Jernigan was arrested and charged with thirteen counts of uttering a counterfeit bill

A Florida man was arrested yesterday by local police after attempting to pay a fine at the Bay County Courthouse with counterfeit bills.

The Bay County Sheriff’s Office reports that John Sheldon Jernigan, from Kelly Street on Panama City Beach, used fake bills to pay his $400 (€292) trespassing fine.

The desk clerk on duty at that moment noticed that the bills looked unusual and alerted a deputy. At a closer examination, officials realized that many of the $20 bills had the same serial number.

When confronted by deputies, Jernigan initially claimed he got the counterfeit bills as pay from his employer, but later changed his story and stated he had no idea where he had received the phony cash.

The 26-year-old man was arrested and charged with thirteen counts of uttering a counterfeit bill. At the time of his arrest, he had 26 counterfeit bills with him, WMBB informs. He was taken to the Bay County Jail and booked.

The US government estimates that less than 0.01% of the country's paper currency in circulation at this moment is counterfeit. This small number is due in large part to the bills' security features, which are hard to reproduce but easy to verify.