United States v. Joseph, No. 12-3808 (3d Cir. 2013)
Annotate this CaseClub security flagged down officers and explained that Joseph had tried to “pass” counterfeit $100 bills. The officer did not inspect the bills but asked Joseph for identification and whether he tendered them at the bar. Joseph acknowledged that he tendered the bills and explained that he had obtained them when he cashed his pay check at a racetrack. Shining his flashlight on one of the bills, an officer saw a discrepancy in the bill’s security features: the president’s face in the bill’s watermark did not match the face printed on the bill. Joseph was arrested and searched at the scene. Officers found 14 more counterfeit $100 bills in Joseph’s pocket. After waiving his Miranda rights, Joseph provided a Secret Service agent with several incriminating text messages from his cell phone and confessed to attempting to pass the counterfeit bills. Indicted under 18 U.S.C. 472, Joseph unsuccessfully moved to suppress the bills, the text messages, and his confession. The Third Circuit rejected an appeal of his conviction, finding that Joseph had not preserved his argument that probable cause to arrest was absent because the officers had insufficient evidence to establish his intent to defraud at the time he passed and possessed the counterfeit bills.
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