Man arrested, cuffed after using $2 bills

[Edwin Sheldon]

Man arrested, cuffed after using $2 bills

A man trying to pay a fee using $2 bills was arrested, handcuffed and taken to jail after clerks at a Best Buy store questioned the currency's legitimacy and called police.

According to an account in the Baltimore Sun, 57-year-old Mike Bolesta was shocked to find himself taken to the Baltimore County lockup in Cockeysville, Md., where he was handcuffed to a pole for three hours while the U.S. Secret Service was called to weigh in on the case.

Bolesta told the Sun: "I am 6 feet 5 inches tall, and I felt like 8 inches high. To be handcuffed, to have all those people looking on, to be cuffed to a pole – and to know you haven't done anything wrong. And me, with a brother, Joe, who spent 33 years on the city police force. It was humiliating."

After Best Buy personnel reportedly told Bolesta he would not be charged for the installation of a stereo in his son's car, he received a call from the store saying it was in fact charging him the fee. As a means of protest, Bolesta decided to pay the $114 bill using 57 crisp, new $2 bills.

As the owner of Capital City Student Tours, the Baltimore resident has a hearty supply of the uncommon currency. He often gives the bills to students who take his tours for meal money.

"The kids don't see that many $2 bills, so they think this is the greatest thing in the world," Bolesta says. "They don't want to spend 'em. They want to save 'em. I've been doing this since I started the company. So I'm thinking, 'I'll stage my little comic protest. I'll pay the $114 with $2 bills.'"

Bolesta explained what happened when he presented the bills to the cashier at Best Buy Feb. 20.

"She looked at the $2 bills and told me, 'I don't have to take these if I don't want to.' I said, 'If you don't, I'm leaving. I've tried to pay my bill twice. You don't want these bills, you can sue me.' So she took the money – like she's doing me a favor."

Bolesta says the cashier marked each bill with a pen. Other store employees began to gather, a few of them asking, "Are these real?"

"Of course they are," Bolesta said. "They're legal tender."

According to the Sun report, the police arrest report noted one employee noticed some smearing of ink on the bills. That's when the cops were called. One officer reportedly noticed the bills ran in sequential order.

Said Bolesta: "I told them, 'I'm a tour operator. I've got thousands of these bills. I get them from my bank. You got a problem, call the bank.' I'm sitting there in a chair. The store's full of people watching this. All of a sudden, he's standing me up and handcuffing me behind my back, telling me, 'We have to do this until we get it straightened out.'

"Meanwhile, everybody's looking at me. I've lived here 18 years. I'm hoping my kids don't walk in and see this. And I'm saying, 'I can't believe you're doing this. I'm paying with legal American money.'"

Bolesta was taken to the lockup, where he sat handcuffed to a pole and in leg irons while the Secret Service was called.

"At this point," he says, "I'm a mass murderer."

Secret Service agent Leigh Turner eventually arrived and declared the bills legitimate, adding, according to the police report, "Sometimes ink on money can smear."

Commenting on the incident, Baltimore County police spokesman Bill Toohey told the Sun: "It's a sign that we're all a little nervous in the post-9/11 world."

How in the fuck does someone get a point-of-sale job without seeing a Jefferson bill?  They aren't THAT uncommon.

[error]

That's a couple of years old.

And a lot of people have never seen $2 bills, nor even know they exist.

[Edwin Sheldon]

It is indeed old, but disturbing, especially considering the LEO arrested him even though the counterfeit detection pens confirmed all the bills were legit.

Has anyone ever pondered the irony of having Jefferson on a Federal Reserve Note?  Perhaps there's a reason he's on the least common bill . . .

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.

[error]

Yep, they did that from 1913-1933. It worked great. (For them, not us.)

[burnthebeautiful]

It is indeed old, but disturbing, especially considering the LEO arrested him even though the counterfeit detection pens confirmed all the bills were legit.

Has anyone ever pondered the irony of having Jefferson on a Federal Reserve Note?  Perhaps there's a reason he's on the least common bill . . .

If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.

That quote sounds a lot like Jefferson was opposed to private currency and wanted the government to be in control.

[mvpel]

He evidently trusted the government too much, not realizing that not only private banks, but the government itself, would inflate and deflate the currency and render children homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.   He probably never imagined that the constitutional provision that States shall make nothing but gold and silver coin tender in payment of debts would not be repealed, but simply ignored.

[Dreepa]

New civil disobedience act:  Gather as many $2 bills as you can, and start spending them.

I just got $200 dollars worth of them.   

[Lloyd Danforth]

New civil disobedience act:  Gather as many $2 bills as you can, and start spending them.

Stamp them

[Dreepa]

New civil disobedience act:  Gather as many $2 bills as you can, and start spending them.

Stamp them

[ancapagency]

Incidentally, if anyone would like to "monkeywrench" the FRNs:

"Counterfeit Detection Pens" are nothing but iodine pens.  The iodine reacts to corn starch, which most paper is treated with, but which FRN paper is not.

Thus, if you spray down FRNs with corn starch, they will read as counterfeit.  If you were to "counterfeit" FRNs with non-corn starch treated paper, they'd read as valid.

[Edwin Sheldon]

That quote sounds a lot like Jefferson was opposed to private currency and wanted the government to be in control.

The government isn't in control now.

[LiveFree]

How'd the civil suit go?

[KurtDaBear]

How'd the civil suit go?

Yeah, that's what I'd like to know.  This thing should have been settled quite some time ago if the story is true and a couple of years old (though probably quietly and out of court).  I hope the guy took cash and not Best Buy stock.

I haven't had any recent problems with Best Buy because I put them on my "Do not patronize" list after my first couple shopping trips there the year our local store opened.  It was obvious that they valued security above service because they always had 5 or 6 security guys standing around each entrance doing nothing, while 1 or 2 cashiers plodded along in front of check-out lines that ran to 8 or 10 people long.  They also generally have a poor inventory and have also pulled that bait-and-switch, free-to-paid installation trick on people I know.

Also I read last week, but I don't remember which political jurisdiction it involved, that officials have filed a consumer fraud complaint against Best Buy because their website directs people to "better deals" on the electronic web kiosks in the stores, then they charge higher prices on the in-store kiosks.  They are, and always have been, a low-class outfit.

[stella]

New civil disobedience act:  Gather as many $2 bills as you can, and start spending them.

I just got $200 dollars worth of them.   

soooo much for collecting them...lets see where they spend the funnest....

[Braddogg]

That guy was being a dick.  The store dicked him over, and he wanted to dick the store over.  I work retail, and it's a hassle getting $2 bills.  There's no convenient place to put them, and if you try and give them out as change . . . well, I stopped doing that after the second attempt.  Same thing with those dollar coins.  I lived in a place that had the equivalent of 2-dollar coins which worked marvelously, but Americans aren't going to walk around with these huge, heavy coins (compared to where I lived, Israel, the golden dollars are huge) when there are paper alternatives.  The guy was a dick, and I would advise against using the $2 bills in normal life.

What really struck me was that last line from the article -- "It's a sign that we're all a little nervous in this post-9/11 world."  BULLSHIT.  It's a sign that the police are violent and retarded.