By Sanchali Singh
(BALTIMORE) U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced on Wednesday that officers at Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport seized $7,000 in counterfeit $100 bills from a traveler arriving from Montego Bay, Jamaica.
The department said in a statement that the incident happened on June 16. Because the 64-year-old U.S. citizen was not criminally charged, the department didn't release his name.
CBP officers found the counterfeit money hidden in a sneaker in the man’s luggage during a secondary exam. The fake dollar bills looked like actually $100 bills, but the department contacted U.S. Secret Service, who confirmed that the currency was counterfeit.
The department seized the counterfeit bills and released the citizen.
“Law enforcement knows that counterfeit and fictitious bank notes have been used in financial crimes, especially ones that target our nation’s unwitting seniors, some of whom have lost their entire life savings,” said Keith Fleming, CBP’s Acting Director of Field Operations in Baltimore.
According to the Secret Service, counterfeiting currency is a “lucrative business” and is most commonly used to finance illegal activities like financial fraud, narcotics smuggling, terrorism and attacks against the country’s financial systems.