The Color of Money Was Just a Bit Off

Bob Tachick brakes for bucks. Even counterfeit ones, it seems.

Tachick, 42, was driving home about 10:30 Monday night with his friend, Brent Smith, when the car in front of them on Alton Parkway rolled over a garbage bag in the road, sending the bag’s contents of $100 bills fluttering into the air.

“I said to Brent, I think that’s money,” Tachick said. “He said, ‘No way.’ But we stopped and he started yelling, ‘It’s cash!’ ”

The euphoria was momentary. Tachick, vice president of franchise sales for a printing chain, recognized the bills as counterfeit.

“It wasn’t a professional attempt--it was pretty amateur,” Tachick said. “The color was off and the paper wasn’t right. Some of the bills were misprinted too, with a front or a back that didn’t turn out.”

More than $100,000 was found in the bag and along Alton Parkway from Sand Canyon Avenue to the Costa Mesa Freeway in Irvine.

Smaller quantities were found at several other locations in Irvine and in southeast Santa Ana and Tustin, according to Irvine Police Officer Gary Harvey.

“It was dark and the road wasn’t very traveled, or we would have had a pretty interesting situation,” Harvey said. “It must have been dumped just before they came along, because it scattered pretty fast.”

The Secret Service, which investigates counterfeiting, is looking for the printer, said Harvey, who added that the quality of the bills was so poor that “it would have to be pretty dark to pass one of these.”

Tachick and Smith, who called Irvine police, helped officers gather the bills. As they were picking up the money, a young woman stopped her car, stepped out and handed them $900 of the bills that she had apparently picked up without realizing that the money was fake.

“There were wet footprints all over the place around the bills,” Irvine Police Sgt. Gary Shull said. “It looked like a lot of people went home with some counterfeit cash.”

Smith, 32, a Utah native who is living with Tachick’s family, said he is not sure what he would have done if it had turned out to be real currency on the roadside.

“I would hope that I would do the right thing, but jeez, a bag of $100 bills in the middle of nowhere,” Smith said. “Nobody would know. It would be tempting.”