The St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office is warning residents of potential fake money that may still be in circulation after a counterfeiting operation was busted.
44-year-old Kenyatta Meads and 46-year-old Lynn Pommier’s alleged operation was shut down and the two were arrested earlier this month. Captain Scott Lee says it’s mostly small bills.
“We don’t know the exact value in terms of what may have been circulated with regards to the counterfeit funds, but we do know that the denominations of the funds appear to be very small, twenty-dollar bills, five-dollar bills, two-dollar bills,” says Lee.
Meads bonded out, but it wasn’t long before he was back behind bars. Lee says deputies were serving an unrelated warrant related to drugs and found Mead back in business at the new house.
“His luck was not all that fortunate, and when we did execute that warrant we were certainly shocked to see that this was an individual that we had arrested just a month ago and he was back in operation at another location,” says Lee.
Meads was rearrested and is now facing 191 counts of Monetary Instrument Abuse, along with some drug charges.
Lee is asking area businesses to be cautious when receiving cash payments for now because they’re not exactly sure how much fake money is still out there.
“We would certainly caution our local businesses to be aware that some of this money may be in circulation and they should inspect the currency that they are taking in for goods and services. to be sure that it is legitimate money,” says Lee.
