RICHMOND, Va. - Tarshema Brice, 34, of Richmond, Va., pled guilty today to manufacturing counterfeit currency. She faces up to 20 years in federal prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release when she is sentenced on Aug. 15, 2014.
Dana J. Boente, Acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia; and William Frantzen, Special Agent in Charge of the United States Secret Service, Richmond Field Office, made the announcement after the plea was accepted today by United States District Judge Henry E. Hudson.
Brice was initially charged, along with four others, in a Criminal Complaint filed on September 6, 2013. She was arrested in September and pled guilty today to a Criminal Information that was filed on March 24, 2014.
According to court documents, Brice obtained genuine Federal Reserve Notes in either one dollar or five dollar denominations, bleached them, and then printed the image from a genuine fifty or one hundred dollar note onto them. She began the counterfeiting operation in approximately March 2012 and remained involved in counterfeiting currency until her arrest in September 2013. In the Statement of Facts filed in support of her plea, Brice admitted she manufactured, or passed, between $10,000.00 and $20,000.00 worth of counterfeit currency.
Last month, Brice’s co-defendant, Norris Heath, who pled guilty to conspiring to manufacture counterfeit currency, was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison. In February 2014, co-defendant Abraham Emanuel Brotherson was sentenced to 1.5 years in federal prison for his role in aiding and abetting the conspiracy; and Warren Kelly Isaacs, who was charged with passing counterfeit notes, was sentenced to one year. La’Keesha Kee, who was also charged with passing counterfeit notes, was found guilty at a trial in February 2014. She is scheduled to be sentenced in May.
This case was investigated by the United States Secret Service. Assistant United States Attorney Angela Mastandrea-Miller prosecuted the cases on behalf of the United States.
A copy of this press release may be found on the website of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia at http://www.justice.gov/usao/vae. Related court documents and information may be found on the website of the District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia at http://www.vaed.uscourts.gov or on https://pcl.uscourts.gov.
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the United States Attorneys
