An Arizona man’s arrest after allegedly passing a counterfeit $100 bill at a Chesterton pizza parlor has prompted further investigation about a potential connection to other similar incidents in Porter County.
George Armond Easton, 45, of East Mirage, Arizona, was arrested earlier this week by Chesterton Police. He was released from the Porter County Jail after posting a $1,500 cash bond on Friday.
Chesterton Police Chief Tim Richardson said there are other law enforcement agencies investigating whether the suspect was involved in additional incidents of passing counterfeit bills in Porter County.
Easton was considered a suspect in an ongoing forgery-counterfeit investigation when Chesterton Police Officer Nolan Mancera stopped the vehicle with Illinois plates for a speeding violation in Chesterton on March 18, according to a probable cause affidavit filed in Porter Superior Court.
At 6 p.m. on March 17, the manager of Papa John’s Pizza in the 700 block of Plaza Drive reported that he received a $100 bill from a man that matched Easton’s description.
The manager gave the man $80 in change and a gift card. But then, the manager became suspicious and when he held the bill up to the light he noticed that it was missing security markers of a stripe alternating “USA” and “100.”
The video camera outside the store captured the Illinois license plate number, which matched the vehicle that Mancera stopped the next day.
The pizza parlor manager went outside and saw the vehicle go to a neighboring Subway on Plaza Drive. The manager phoned the Subway and as a result, the manager there refused to accept a $100 bill from the same man for a $20 gift card.
Surveillance video from the Subway confirmed that the man, identified as Easton, was the same one who visited Papa John’s moments before, the court record said.
In the course of the Chesterton Police investigation, Officer Mancera said he discovered there was a recent incident at the Dunkin Donuts in Portage of a counterfeit $100 bill being passed.
A review of video footage from the Dunkin Donuts showed that the man involved in that incident looked like Easton, court records show.
When Easton was stopped for a traffic violation in Chesterton, Mancera noted that the hat Easton was wearing matched that of the man in the video from the Dunkin Donuts case in Portage, the probable cause statement said.
Jim Woods is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
