Counterfeit Money: Californian Charged After Fairfax Police Investigate

PHOTO of suspect Eric Carl Aspden, 43 of Cupertino, Calif. Photo courtesy of Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office

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A Cupertino, Calif. man, reportedly using a printer at his home, was busted this week for an alleged multi-state counterfeiting operation after an investigation that started more than a year ago in Fairfax County, California authorities said.

Police say the suspect, Eric Carl Aspden, 43, a former pharmacist, used a simple copying machine, cotton paper and scissors to create phony $20 bills and then shipped thousands of packages of the fake cash all across the country, including to Virginia, where authorities began an investigation when the fake bills were discovered more than a year ago.

The link to California was made by police in Fairfax County, where merchants were seeing a high volume of the fake $20 bills, ABC-7 in San Francisco reported.

Just last week, two Vienna businesses reported that fake $20 bills were used at their businesses.

Read: Suspect Pays with Phony $20 Bills

Police did not say who he was sending the phony money to or how he got in touch with them, but did say the fake cash was being sent to states across the country.

Fairfax County authorities have charged Aspden with five felony counts of passing counterfeit bank notes, according to the Mercury News.

Santa Clara County, Calif. Sheriff's Detective Justin Harper said at a news conference announcing the arrest that Aspden allegedly mailed 2,000 packages a year, with varying amounts of currency. One package bought by undercover officers that helped launch the investigation contained $1,000 in counterfeit bills, according to the Mercury News report.

In addition to Fairfax County Police and the Santa Clara County authorities, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service was also a part of the investigation.