Enfield Man Accused of Passing Counterfeit Bills

ENFIELD, CT — A local man with a lengthy history of petty crimes was charged Tuesday on a warrant accusing him of passing counterfeit bills on at least two recent occasions.

Vincent Deprisco, 55, who already has two other pending cases, was charged with first-degree forgery in his latest arrest. He is free on a written promise to appear in court Apr. 20.

An affidavit supporting his arrest indicates Deprisco approached a woman at Jimmy's Pub on Enfield St. in Dec. 2019, claiming he could provide her with various items, such as Bath & Body Works products, at discounted prices. She paid him a total of $300, and twice that month they met and he provided her with $100 worth of merchandise each time. Realizing she was shorted by a hundred dollars, the woman said she wanted her money back, and Deprisco promised to meet her the next night, giving her his cell phone as collateral.

The woman told police she did not hear from Deprisco until he messaged her on Facebook on Jan. 9, asking her to pick him up in the parking lot across from Caronna's Market on Pearl St. He did not give her enough items to cover the $100 shortage, so the woman said she would sell him back his phone for $50 and forgive the difference, the affidavit says.

Deprisco gave her a $100 bill, and she gave him back $50 change. She went to Jimmy's Pub and used the $100 bill to pay her bar tab, but the bill turned out to be counterfeit, containing "red, pink and white symbols in an Asian language," plus gray dash marks, according to the affidavit.

Investigation revealed Deprisco had tried using a counterfeit $20 bill at Panera Bread on Oct. 4, 2019, containing similar markings to the bill used in the Jimmy's Pub case. Deprisco claimed he had gotten the $20 bill as change from a purchase at the adjacent Mobil Mart, according to the affidavit.

Similarly, Deprisco said the $100 bill from the Jimmy's Pub case was payment he had received from his boss for work he had done, and that he had accompanied the man when the bill was withdrawn from his credit union. The man told police Deprisco had worked for him cleaning out an unoccupied residence more than a year earlier, and Deprisco had not worked for him since. He also said he did not give Deprisco a $100 bill, the affidavit states.

Judicial records show Deprisco has been convicted 10 times since 2012 for numerous larceny counts, plus violating his probation, assault, criminal trespass and threatening. He has been sentenced to prison time in seven of those cases, totaling just over three years.

His pending cases from 2020 include a larceny and criminal trespass arrest on Jan. 28, and a larceny arrest on Feb. 16, according to judicial records.