Police on look-out for man passing fake $100s

Counterfeit money has been passed at Tosa businesses several times in the past few weeks, and the Wauwatosa Police Department has a description of the suspect.

According to police reports:

In the last week, a black man in his 20s or 30s with dreadlocks pulled into a ponytail passed counterfeit $100 bills at two Walgreen's stores in Wauwatosa. Store employees said he was wearing a dark-colored jacket, perhaps leather, a white sweater with thin blue horizontal stripes along the bottom, light color pants and white tennis shoes.

On Sunday, he purchased first aid tape for a little less than $5 with a $100 bill at the store on Mayfair Road and North Avenue. Suspicious, the clerk began to examine the money but the man said his grandmother gave him it so of course it was real. Feeling bad about doubting the man, the clerk let him go only to find out his instincts had been correct.

The fake $100 was really a washed out $5 bill.

The next day, a man matching the same description bought cigarettes at the Walgreen's on Wauwatosa Avenue, again with a phony $100 bill at 5:23 p.m. This time the paper had Abraham Lincoln on it and the $100 was printed in green ink.

The Menomonee Falls Police Department also took a report of a man with dreadlocks passing a counterfeit $100 in that community.