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A MAN who left a trail of forged $50 notes around Lithgow and the Central Coast was brought unstuck by an alert Lithgow service station attendant.
Twenty one year old Jaiden Deacon-Shaw, from Blue Haven, on the Central Coast, pleaded guilty in Lithgow Court to possessing six $50 counterfeit notes and four counts of uttering counterfeit currency.
Magistrate Michael Allan was told that Deacon-Shaw was in Lithgow on ‘work related’ matters on January 15 when he engaged in a spending spree with counterfeit money.
After booking in at a local hotel he purchased a packet of cigarettes at the Woolworths Caltex service station and received change for $50.
Later at the Commercial Hotel he attempted to put one of the notes in a poker machine but the machine had a mind of its own and rejected it.
Undeterred he returned to the nearby service station for another small purchase, this time a packet of chewing gum, and pocketed the change from $50.
Soon afterwards a Lithgow Highway Patrol officer stopped to fill his vehicle and the service station attendant raised suspicions about the money that had come over the counter.
This began an inquiry that led to McDonalds restaurant where Deacon-Shaw was recorded on CCTV making a purchase with another dud note.
Importantly the CCTV also showed him leaving in a Ford ute.
This in turn led police to the car park at the Commercial Hotel — and a late night unwelcome knock on the door of the defendant’s room.
He quickly admitted to having ‘some fake notes’ and handed police a further six counterfeits.
Deacon-Shaw told police he had sold his old Mazda car to an ‘unknown person’ a month earlier for $800.
He later suspected the notes were fake and kept them apart from his ‘real cash’.
Magistrate Allan was told the defendant had not notified police as he ‘did not want to be out of pocket’.
He had also admitted to police that he had passed two of the fake notes at service stations at Katoomba and at a discount store in Lithgow but these were never located.
Deacon-Shaw was remanded for sentence at Wyong Court where he had previously been convicted of three counts of uttering counterfeit money.
That has been listed for September 21.