Forged €50 notes warning

LOCAL gardai have warned that forged €50 notes are circulating in the West Cork area.

A number of successful attempts have been made to pass the counterfeit notes in transactions around the division.

Between Monday November 2nd and Friday November 6th, several forged notes were passed over counters, including at shops in Enniskeane, Skibbereen, Crookstown and at market stalls in Bantry at the Friday country market.

An unsuccessful attempt was made to pass a €50 note in a shop in Macroom, and last Friday another attempt failed in Clonakilty. In this instance, the target was a fast food outlet in the town when two suspects – a male and a female – attempted the scam.

The male is described as being in his early 20s, with red hair, and the female is said to be approximately 60 years of age, with blonde shoulder-length hair, with grey roots.

In a separate incident, a young non-national couple performed a change scam at a shop in Ballydehob on Friday November 6th and got away with €400. They had earlier tried their scam in Bantry.

The news comes in the same week as Muintir na Tire cited West Cork as an example of how well the Community Alert scheme can work.

The organisation was meeting with the Oireachtas Joint Committee for Justice, having been invited by the Committee to celebrate the 30-year anniversary of Community Alert and to outline the organisation’s thoughts on rural crime. 

Diarmuid Cronin, Community Alert development officer, gave a case study of West Cork, one of the largest divisions in the country and which has a very active Community Alert programme. That entire division had less than half the number of burglaries of Mallow alone, he said.