NAHA, Okinawa — A 20-year-old Marine assigned to 3rd Marine Logistics Group was indicted in Naha General District Court on Friday on charges of forging and passing counterfeit currency.
Pfc. Phillip C. Scott was immediately turned over to Japanese police custody and is being held in the Naha Detention Center pending a trial. No hearing date has been set.
Marine spokesman Master Sgt. Charles Albrecht said the Naval Criminal Investigative Service worked with Japanese police on the probe into fake $20 bills that first surfaced in September at businesses in central Okinawa.
the indictment focuses on four incidents in November.
According to the indictment, Scott made some of the bills in his barracks room on Camp Kinser, using a photocopier and printing the images on cheap paper.
On Nov. 10, he allegedly gave a clerk in the city of Urasoe two of the bills for 5,040 yen worth of food and drink. On Nov. 12, he allegedly used a counterfeit $20 bill to pay for a 620-yen cab ride in Okinawa City.
He also is accused of giving a bartender in Okinawa City three fake $20 bills for a 5,000-yen bar tab and handing over two bogus twenties to another cabbie for a 3,080-yen taxi ride.
According to Okinawa police, most of the counterfeit twenties were used for cab fare — with change in yen — from cab drivers in Okinawa City, Chatan and Uruma City. Many of the rides were to U.S. military bases.
