Police: Two Groups of Young New Yorkers Come to CT to Pass Counterfeit $100 Bills

Picture: Darien Police Arrest photo of Olivia Cevallos, 20, of Brooklyn

When Olivia Cevallos bought an orange juice and several small cookies for $7.64 at the Panera Bread restaurant in Darien, she handed the clerk a phony $100, according to police, and received $92.36 back in real money.

The 20-year-old Brooklynite’s act of larceny, according to Darien police reports, was the least lucrative of the counterfeit-money exchanges that day. The police reports that tell a pair of long stories.

Downtown retail businesses along the Post Road were visited twice last week by two different groups of young New Yorkers with counterfeit $100 bills in their hands, wanting to exchange them for items worth usually $5 or less, and getting real money in change.

In both cases, police in this low-crime community rushed in when shops called them. Police said they identified the people passing the bills and arrested them, along with the people who had come to town with them.

At least one agent with the U.S. Secret Service, which investigates counterfeiting, came and interviewed at least some of the arrestees. One arrestee gave a description of a man in New York City who was selling the phony bills, according to Darien police.

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See also:

• U.S. Secret Service: How to Detect Counterfeit Money
• Other articles from the Secret Service website on identifying features (interesting, but much of it isn’t directly helpful for recognizing counterfeits)

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Darien police gave these accounts (in each case, accusations not proven in court) of the separate incidents:

The first people with counterfeit money to exchange came to town on Monday, Oct. 20 in a 2010 Dodge Charger. It parked on ....., near the Post Road.

Cevallos entered the Gofer Ice Cream shop at about 4 p.m., took an item out of a freexer and handed it to the clerk with a $100 bill. The clerk used a special magic marker to test the bill, and the money failed the test. The clerk also noticed markings on the bill which appeared to be fake.

(Detective Mark Cappelli of Darien police said counterfeiters can get around paper identification devices by ”washing” real money on a low-denomination bill such as a $1 bill so that the original print fades. Then a fake printing can make it look like a $100 bill.

(Newer $100 bills have very prominent, hard-to-reproduce, non-paper strips (called “security ribbons”) embedded in them, but there are plenty of older bills still in circulation.)

The clerk told Cevallos that she couldn’t make change for the bill. Cevallos told the clerk she’d go exchange it at another store and left.

Two to four minutes later, Richard Gordon entered the same store and asked for two scoops of ice cream, which cost $4.99. He handed the clerk a $100 bill. The clerk told him that unfortunately Gofer does not accept $100 bills. Gordon gave her back the ice cream and left the store.

The clerk called the cops.

Police were told that Gordon was also seen walking into Uncle’s Deli at 1041 Post Rd. and then leave it a short time later, empty handed. Gordon continued to walk north on Brook Street and then entered a silver-colored vehicle parked near the Post Road.

An officer approached the vehicle and saw a black male fitting the description of the man who tried to buy the ice cream and a white female who fit the description of the woman who also tried to buy something at Gofer.

Police said they saw what seemed to be a “large amount” of U.S. currency in her hand, and when she saw the officer she tried to conceal it in the front pocket of her sweatshirt.

Police said in another part of the report (or another report) that two counterfeit $100 bills were seized, along with $92.36 on Cevallos and $96.50 on Gordon (the amount of change Cevallos received from Panera and that Gordon received from EspressoNEAT.

There were four people in the car, but police had enough information to arrest only Cevallos and Gordon. The driver of the car was a 20-year-old man from the Bronx, and the other passenger was 17, also from the Bronx.

When the officer spoke to the driver of the car, the officer smelled a strong odor of burnt marijuana, so all four people inside were directed to leave the vehicle, which was searched. Only traces of marijuana were found.

All the occupants admitted to smoking marijuana earlier, and all denied having anything to do with fraudulent actions.

In speaking with store managers and owners in the area, Cevallos’ transaction at Panera Bread was discovered.

At Espresso Neat, 20 Grove St., Gordon had bought a $3.50 with a phony $100 bill. After completing the transaction, the clerk became suspicious enough about the bill to show it to the store manager.

At Everything Is Rosey, 1072 Post Rd., Gordon tried to get a wallet and a $10 phone charger with a $100 bill but was told the store doesn’t accept $100 bills. About five minutes later, Cevallos entered the same store and tried to buy a $10 pair of earrings and got the same response from the clerk.

Cevallos, of Leland Avenue in the Bronx, and Gordon, 19, of Irving Ave., Dolton, IL (a suburb just west of Chicago) were each charged with first-degree forgery and sixth-degree larceny (each charge in connection with successfully passing the counterfeit bills and getting money back in return), and two counts each of conspiracy at attempted sixth degree larceny (for the failed attempts at Gofer and Everything Is Rosey).

Each was held on $20,000 bond and did not make bail. After appearing in state Superior Court in Stamford, the bail amounts for each were reduced to $10,000, which neither paid immediately. The next court date for each is Nov. 12.

Second incident

The second incident occurred the following Saturday in the same area of downtown Darien. At Olivette, a close neighbor of Everything Is Rosey, a teenage girl was trying to use a $100 to buy a small item but was refused. She also tried at the Spree store. Police were notified at 2:38 p.m.

An officer was pointed to Beadz Boutique, also nearby, where he found the teenager at the counter. She told him she was shopping. He asked if he could see her money. She handed him the $100 bill. It looked counterfeit to him — in fact, it appeare extremely similar to the ones found the previous Monday.

She initially said she’d received the money after selling two iPads on Craigs List the previous week and that she lived in Jackson Heights, Queens. He said he doubted her story.

She was taken into custody. Police found seven counterfeit $100 in her wallet.

She said her boyfriend and another man were in a gray Mazda with New York license plates parked behind Panera Bread restaurant. Police went there with her, and she identified her boyfriend standing outside the car, a gray Mazda CX5 with New York license plates.

Police spoke with the two men. One, who said he was Jeffrey Agudelo, said the two were there on an errand, stopped to use the bathroom and his friend fell asleep. He said he wasn’t with anyone else. The officer told Jeffrey he was lying and that he had Jeffrey’s girlfriend under arrest.

Agudelo was taken into custody. In his right front pocket he had $210. In his left cargo-pants pocket, he had another $70. There was $115 in various locations in the car. In the center console between the two front seats there were 20 counterfeit $100 bills.

Police took the men’s fingerprints, which were entered into the Automated Fingerprint Identification System (called “AFIS” for short), a quick Internet system for identifying people based on fingerprints already on file. AFIS identified Jeffrey Agudelo as Jeffrey Cardenas, 22, of 37-40 81st St., in the Elmhurst section of Queens.

His companion, the driver, who told police his name was Brandon Martinez, was identified by the same system as Marlon Quiroga, 19, of 32-56 81st St. in Elmhurst. Criminal records checks of the young men showed a lengthy list of incidents for each of them.

The 17-year-old girl, who also lied about her real name, is from the Jackson Heights section of Queens (just to the north of Elmhurst).

In the back compartment of the vehicle there were two boxes that appeared to be the original containers for items just bought from a store. One containined a 48-inch Vizio brand television; the other, Laurent brand doll furniture. Police don’t have any reason to believe the items were stolen, but they don’t know what store or stores they were bought from. The vehicle is a rental.

The girl’s family was called by police, and her father came to Darien Police Headquarters, as did a U.S. Secret Service agent who interviewed the girl with Darien police.

She told police that she and her boyfriend, Cardenas, had been picked up by Quiroga that day at about 12:30. They used a GPS device to take them to Darien in order to spend money that she knew was counterfeit.

The girl said that she and Quiroga had done this three times in the past month, each time stopping at a town along Interstate 95. Her boyfriend had not been with them on those occasions because he had been arrested the week before by New York City police when trying to pass a $100 bill in Queens.

She said she was with Quiroga a few times when he bought the counterfeit bills from a tall, large-bellied Mexican who hangs out in the Woodside section of Queens (just to the east of Jackson Heights).

The girl was released to the custody of her father and was scheduled to appear later in state Juvenile Court in Stamford. She and the two men were each charged with 27 counts of first-degree forgery (for each of the counterfeit $100 bills), one count of conspiracy to commit first-degree forgery, four counts of attempting to commit fourth-degree larceny and interfering with an officer (that last charge was in connection with giving false names to police).

The two men were each held on $20,000 bond and appeared in state Superior Court in Stamford. Cardenas’ bond is now set at $40,000, and Quiroga’s at $30,000, according to the Connecticut Judicial Branch website. Each is next scheduled to appear Nov. 10 in the same court.

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