Suspects "Bought $300,000 Jewelry with Fake Bills"

(IDEX Online) - Two men have been charged with using fake notes to pay for $300,000 of luxury watches and jewelry from a store in Pineville, North Carolina, USA.

Robert Lewis Elliott III, aged 36, and Devin Alonzo Elliott, aged 30, allegedly put down a $1,000 deposit in genuine notes, then used sleight of hand to pass the remainder in fake bills.

They fled with a Patek Phillipe diamond watch ($90,000); an Audemars Piguet watch ($48,000); a Cartier watch ($25,000); four Rolex watches ($76,300); a rose Cuban link chain ($32,000); a gold bracelet ($17,500); a bangle bracelet ($8,200); diamond earrings ($1,000); and 24k pointer earrings ($2,000), according to the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina.

Robert Elliott provided a $10,000 stack of genuine $100 bills to the store employee to be counted, on 27 June, says the indictment.

"After the employee verified the money using an electronic counter and a counterfeit detection pen, R. Elliott allegedly used a sleight-of-hand technique, to swap the authentic bills with a stack of counterfeit notes, before placing the counterfeit bills into the store's safe.

"He then recycled the same stack of genuine bills, repeating the process until all the counterfeit currency had been placed in the safe."

If convicted, the suspects, from Mississippi, face up to five years in prison for conspiracy to pass counterfeit obligations, and 20 years in prison for passing counterfeit obligations.

Pic courtesy U.S. Attorney for the Western District of North Carolina.