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Sickles girls basketball team paid with counterfeit $50 at fundraiser

By Arleen Spenceley, Times Staff Writer
In print: Thursday, July 24, 2008

Members of the Sickles High girls basketball team wash a car at a fundraiser they held at a Burger King. They were raising money to help offset the cost of an upcoming camp.
	[\uFEFFCourtesy of Veronica Botts]

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CARROLLWOOD — The young basketball players thought they had a big customer. A woman in a shiny black car flashed them a $50 bill for a $7 car wash, asking for only $25 back.

"I told the girls, 'She just gave you $25 to wash her car,' " said Veronica Botts, a Sickles High mother who chaperoned the fundraising event outside a Burger King. "She was young, pretty and very nice."

Botts said she wanted to hug the driver for giving such a great tip. Then the team's coach tried to deposit the bill in a bank.

It was really a $5 bill altered to look like a 50, said Sickles girls' basketball coach Mark Key, who got the news from a bank teller Tuesday.

"I think it's a bad sign of society if we get to the point where we've got to try to cheat kids out of money," he said.

The girls thought they had raised $221 to lower the cost of an upcoming basketball camp. But the bank confiscated the bill and told Key it can't reimburse the team.

Botts and her daughter believe this was no accident.

"I hope she gets caught," said Lindsey Botts, 16, who helped wash the car. "I don't want her ripping someone else off."

Arleen Spenceley can be reached at (813) 269-5301 or aspenceley@sptimes.com.