Counterfeiter to serve 4 months

A man who circulated counterfeit $50 bills around the Midstate will spend four months behind bars for criminal simulation.

The defendant, Joshua Lee Roark, entered a guilty plea before Circuit Court Judge Bart Stanley to the charge of criminal simulation and was directed to serve 135 days of a three-year sentence, make restitution to the businesses which accepted the fake bills and perform 32 hours public service work.

Lawmen say Roark was the distributor of the phony $50s which were generated on a high-quality computer printer, likely the result of simply scanning a legitimate bill and then making copies. However, Roark, lawmen say, gave the bills in question to a woman named Diedra Kester who went about passing them at various locations across Warren County. Kester was given probation for her role in the crime.

An investigation began after Kester passed the phony $50 bills at Whitlock’s Grocery and at a yard sale, using the fake $50 at the yard sale to purchase baby clothes. She also tried, unsuccessfully, to pass two more of the counterfeit bills at Verizon Wireless and BJ’s. It was her failed attempts to pass the fake bills that caught the attention of law enforcement.

‘The bills looked pretty good for computer-generated bills,’ said Warren County Sheriff’s Investigator Jim Hartman who charged the couple after determining they were behind the counterfeiting scheme.

From Kester, lawmen tracked the phony bills back to Roark who was reportedly in possession of $2,000 worth of counterfeit bills, including denominations of $100 and $50. However, by the time lawmen arrived, Roark had removed the evidence.