FREEPORT — Police are still seeking tips from the public to identify suspects in a counterfeit money scam in Freeport from over a week ago.

The two suspects, caught on surveillance video, paid using fake $100 bills at businesses on Sunday, Feb. 24, according to the Freeport Police Department. Images of the suspects were posted to the department’s Facebook page and the Stateline Area Crime Stoppers website the same day.

Victims of the fraud include Girl Scouts selling cookies in front of a grocery store. The suspects defrauded over a dozen businesses along South West Avenue and West South Street.

“We’re up to 16 businesses that we know of,” Andrew Schroeder, the detective on the case, said on Monday, March 4.

His department sent out bulletins about the investigation to other law enforcement agencies but hasn’t heard back about similar counterfeit crimes happening in the Stateline area.

Schroeder said this is unusual and surprising.

“I find it hard to believe that (the suspects) would come all the way out here without stopping in other cities,” he said, noting that he believes the suspects are not from the Freeport area.

“I think if they were from Freeport, we would have them identified already,” he said.

The suspects worked together and are described as a “short, heavy-set white female with long, straight auburn-colored hair wearing a black Adidas jacket and dark gray yoga pants” and a “tall, thin black male with long dreadlocks wearing a black stocking cap, gray sweatshirt with white hood strings, dark-color pants and tan work boots.” Police say they’re traveling in a newer model gray or silver Honda CRV.

The counterfeit bills are actually bleached $10 bills altered to look like $100 bills, according to police. Because of how the bills are altered, they pass the counterfeit detector pen test used by many businesses.

One way to detect the alteration is to compare the large picture of Benjamin Franklin on the front of the note to the hologram picture on the right side of the bill. 

If the pictures do not match, the bill is a counterfeit.

Police are asking anyone with information about the case to contact detectives at 815-235-8226 or Stateline Area Crime Stoppers at 866-TIPSNOW (847-7669). 

Anonymous tips can also be submitted to Crime Stoppers on the P3 mobile phone app, the Stateline Area Crime Stoppers website or by using the “Submit a Tip” button on the Crime Stoppers Facebook page.