‘The lowest of the low.’ Florida Girl Scouts learn about counterfeit bills the hard way
A 7-year-old Girl Scout learned how rotten people can be after she dutifully counted back change from a $50 bill for two boxes of cookies.
At $5 bucks apiece, the child, a member of a Girl Scouts troop in the Bradenton area, had to give the customer $40 in change.
That’s what she gave the man, her mother told WTSP-Channel 10 on Tuesday.
The problem: The $50 bill was counterfeit. So that’s a $50 loss right there.
“She took her time to make sure she counted, with care, his change and handed it back to him and told him ‘thank you for supporting Girl Scouts.’ At first she felt like she did something wrong and that was tough, as a mom, to explain that she didn’t,” Michelle Cramer told the station.
Cramer’s 7- and 10-year-old daughters were working the Girl Scouts’ cookie booth on the weekend.
Hundreds lost to counterfeiters
Add that loss to the hundreds of dollars — about $650 — that the Girl Scouts of Gulfcoast Florida in the Tampa Bay area told Bradenton police it lost since Valentine’s Day after “customers” paid for the cookies with bogus dough, WFTS ABC Action News reported.
“Girl Scouts do their very best to be honest and fair, friendly and helpful, considerate and caring, courageous and strong, and responsible for what they say and do. Using counterfeit bills is not only against the law, but also gets in the way of providing girls with amazing leadership experiences,” the Girl Scouts of Gulfcoast Florida posted on Facebook Tuesday.
The response to the Facebook post is not surprising.
“The lowest of the low.”
“That is dirty doing that to kids.”
Many Girl Scout troops victimized
About six Girl Scouts troops have been affected. The girls were selling the popular seasonal treats to raise funds for scouting activities outside two Publix grocery stores and a Walmart.
Kelly McGraw, a director with the Girl Scouts, told WWSB ABC 7, “All of these counterfeit bills are deducting from them reaching their goals. On the flip side, they’re learning about counterfeit bills, but then of course, someone has to explain to them why someone would like to rip off a little girl’s cookie business.”
The Girl Scouts of Gulfcoast Florida’s is accepting donations to help the troops make up the loss from the scam. The webpage has a notice that if that’s the intention behind your donation you can mark it as such.
The Bradenton Police Department is investigating.
Not Florida’s first scam
This is not the first time the Girl Scouts of Gulfcoast Florida have been scammed.
In 2016, a former bookkeeper was charged with embezzling $85,000 from the organization.
In November 2017, Stephanie Person was sentenced to 30 months in prison, ordered to pay $112,158.20, and serve 27 years of probation for rerouting funds from an active troop account into an inactive one.
Oregon arrest
Meanwhile, a man in Oregon was busted for twice using counterfeit $20 bills to buy Girl Scouts cookies outside a Walmart, the Statesmen Journal reported. Salem police arrested Camden Ducharme, 36, and charged him with forgery and theft on Sunday.
This story was originally published February 26, 2020 at 11:03 AM.
