SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - Six people believed connected to a money counterfeiting operation based in Scottsdale were arrested at the end of June, according to Scottsdale police.
The group allegedly bleached $1 bills and printed the image of $100 bills on them, then passed the phony currency to retail outlets and used them to initiate money transfers. According to documents, each of the notes shared the same poor manufacturing characteristics including ink-jet printing, improper watermark and security threat, lack of optical-variable ink and lack of genuine intaglio printing.
Jonathon Somercik, Mandy Legan, Kyle Calhoun, Neal Wood and Randy Tobin were taken into custody on June 29 in Scottsdale. Another person connected with the investigation, Pamela Augustine, was arrested on June 28 in La Paz County.
Augustine was taken into custody "for possession of dangerous drugs, narcotic drugs, and drug paraphernalia. During a search of [her car], deputies located twenty-five (25) counterfeit $100 federal Reserve Notes in the glove box, all matching the same characteristics."
When a search warrant was served on the residence the other five shared in the 1800 block of N. 72nd Place, Randy Tobin and Mandy Legan were arrested without incident, Scottsdale police said.
According to a police release, Neal Wood, Jonathon Somercik, and Kyle Calhoun barricaded themselves in the back bedroom for approximately 10 minutes. It went on to say that "SWAT officers made entry into the bedroom and the three were arrested after a brief struggle."
The release also stated that "during a search of the resdience, evidence of manufacturing $100 notes were found in open view to include scraps of counterfeit test examples, degreaser and bleach chemicals, multiple scanner/copier combination machines, laptop computers, and genuine $1.00 notes in the process of being bleached to be recopied. Such evidence was located in the bedrooms belonging to Somercik, Tobin and Legan, and Wood."
