Bremerton police arrest three people suspected of buying Girl Scout cookies with bogus bills

Police say three people who cheated a Bremerton Girl Scout troop out of $100 in cookie sales by passing fake $20 bills got their comeuppance when a pharmacy clerk, a customer and a man listening to a police scanner led officers to the suspects.

Girl Scout Troop 40411 is out the equivalent of 25 boxes of cookies after accepting the phony bills, said Bremerton police Det. Sgt. Kevin Crane. He estimated $1,000 in fake money was distributed to a number of businesses in Bremerton and elsewhere on the Kitsap Peninsula. "The motive for everything is profit," Crane said. The forgers would use the fake bills to buy a small item — a box of cookies, a candy bar, or a can of soda, say — in order to get real money back as change, he said.

On Sunday afternoon, a man went into the Rite Aid pharmacy at 4117 Kitsap Way and tried to buy an item with a fake bill, Crane said. But the clerk suspected it was a phony $20 and told the man she was calling police. He fled the store and jumped into a car being driven by a young woman — but the pharmacy employee jotted down the vehicle's license-plate number and a customer followed the car in his own vehicle, passing along information to a 911 operator.

Soon after, a man listening to a police scanner as he worked in his garage called police after seeing a vehicle that matched the description of the car in an alley behind his house, Crane said. He told officers he saw the female driver get out of her car and throw something into a garbage can.

Officers recovered a box containing a dozen fake $20 bills and interviewed the 18-year-old woman who was driving the car, Crane said. She implicated five other people in the forgery scheme, leading officers to serve a search warrant on a house in the 1100 block of 12th Street, he said.

The woman and two men, ages 21 and 22, were arrested on suspicion of forgery, and police are looking for a third man, Crane said. Another man was arrested at the scene on unrelated charges.

Inside the house, police found a printer and printing supplies, along with methamphetamine, marijuana and drug paraphernalia, Crane said.

The fake bills "are pretty decent," Crane said. "Certainly decent enough to convince a little kid selling Girl Scout cookies that it's a real bill."

Bail was set at $100,000 each for the men and woman, who are being held in the Kitsap County Jail. The three, who were expected to make their first court appearances today, are also likely to face narcotics-related charges, Crane said.

Sara Jean Green: 206-515-5654 or sgreen@seattletimes.com