Man used bleach, $1 bills and a little creativity to make $235K in fake cash, feds say
A man got a little creative and led a counterfeit money scheme by using bleach, real $1 bills and a printer that he traveled with to create fake $100 bills totaling $235,000, federal officials in Virginia said.
This comes after he was convicted twice in 2015 for using counterfeit money, court documents obtained by McClatchy News state. Most recently, he’d bleach the real dollars and print images of $100 onto them before handing them out to co-conspirators for them to make purchases, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia.
New Jersey resident Hollis Forteau, 38, was sentenced to five years in prison on Monday, March 14, federal officials said.
“Mr. Forteau is sincerely regretful for any harm that he had caused,” his lawyer Daymen Robinson told McClatchy News in a statement. “He will immediately begin to reimburse those who suffered economic lost and do his best to make amends for his conduct.”
In December 2019 and January 2020, Forteau and at least six others working with him drove from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Virginia, where he directed the others to make purchases at local retailers with the fake cash, according to court documents. Then, prosecutors say, they drove to the same retailers at a different location to return the items they illegally bought and obtain real cash.
Forteau would take a cut of the money, prosecutors said.
“To ensure a consistent supply” of the fake bills, Forteau traveled with a printer, which was bought with counterfeit money, and a laptop to create them in hotel rooms, according to court documents.
He used “genuine” bills so the fake ones would feel real even if “store employees marked them with a counterfeit detection pen.”
However, some stores can detect fake money through a scanner, so Forteau and the others targeted locations where these machines weren’t in use, court documents state.
Three female co-conspirators were caught in early January 2020 when a Sunglass Hut worker followed their car to another parking lot after they used fake $100 bills at the store, according to prosecutors. They were arrested.
Forteau blamed one of them during a phone call placed to the jail where she was taken, saying she “was definitely going to pay a price for this,” the documents state.
“What’s worse, me smacking the s--- out of you or being hit like this [i.e., being arrested],” he said, according to court documents.
The three women were charged with possession of the fake cash, fraudulently obtaining money and conspiring to commit a felony, according to the Virginia Gazette.
Once they were released from jail, Forteau picked them up and headed back to Pennsylvania. On the way there, they made more purchases with fake money, according to officials.
However, Forteau was on the U.S. Secret Service’s radar after their arrests, and he was arrested in September 2021, a sentencing memorandum said. He was found with his printer, laptop, a wad of 29 bleached $1 bills, a fake $100 bill and several printer ink cartridges, court documents state.
While detained, his romantic partner was in possession of a rental Kia he was driving. Authorities obtained a search warrant and found 110 fake $100 bills inside, according to prosecutors. Some were concealed inside a package of Swisher Sweet cigars while the rest were stuffed behind the car’s door panels.
Court documents say Forteau is the father of three children, including a 16-year-old daughter who described his detainment as “extremely difficult” to a judge involved in the case.
“I would like to let you know how much of a good father he is to myself and my brothers. I also acknowledge what he has done and how it has affected me personally,” she wrote.
“Your honor this is not my fathers first time being locked up but I do pray that it is his last time. He is and has already missed out on some important moments in my life.”
Forteau is the first to be sentenced in this case out of his co-conspirators, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, Kelsey Kovacs, told McClatchy News in a statement.
This story was originally published March 15, 2022 at 2:44 PM with the headline "Man used bleach, $1 bills and a little creativity to make $235K in fake cash, feds say."
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