SIBU: A local man was nabbed for allegedly using counterfeit money to purchase a smartphone and a Digi reload card.
On Saturday, a 24-year-old store assistant lodged a police report claiming to have received five counterfeit RM100 notes from a customer.
He said that at 11am, a man came to his phone store in Jalan Channel to purchase a used mobile phone that was on offer for RM490. He paid for it with five pieces of RM100 notes.
The complainant realised that the money was fake around 2.15pm that day after scanning the notes.
“The complainant received three pieces of RM100 all bearing the serial number CS1645698, and two pieces of RM100 with serial number DF3456138,” said district police chief ACP Stanley Jonathan Ringgit.
The next day, the suspect used the same tactic to buy a top-up credit worth RM10 at a different phone shot in Jalan Channel.
Stanley noted that the suspect used a RM100 note to pay for the card, but the vendor was suspicious so he scanned the banknote and noticed that it was a fake one.
The owner then got the help of another business owner to apprehend the man and handed him over to the police.
“At 8.30pm on the same day, a police team and the suspect went to a house at Lorong Oya. There the police seized eight pieces of counterfeit RM100 banknotes and a mobile phone,” said Stanley.
The suspect is under remand until Dec 28 to facilitate investigations into his case under Section 489B of the Penal Code.
