In Prince William County, Virginia, a DUI arrest turned into a counterfeit currency bust when police discovered that the two men being arrested had three odd-looking $100 bills in their possession.

According to the Washington Post, police nabbed the two men on what they thought was a routine suspicion of drunk driving stop. When the police officer searched the men, though, he found several $100 bills that didn’t look quite right.

What tipped him off was a message written next to Benjamin Franklin’s head that read “BILLETE DE LA SUERTE ALASITAS.” According to the Washington Post, it denotes the bill as a good luck ticket for the festival of Alasitas, which is a festival held every year in Peru and Bolivia. At the festivals, bills of this kind are handed out widely in casinos and elsewhere.

Apparently these bills are available on eBay, from a seller operating out of England.

The officer determined that the bills were counterfeit, and police investigated the strange bills further. They found that the driver’s friend had even more of the bills, and when they searched his house they found 59 more.

According to the U.S. Secret Service, these bills have appeared in the Federal Reserve Bank 125 times. In other words, someone has accepted this type of bill as real currency at least 125 times over the years.

Federal prosecutors were not interested in pursuing the case of the drunk drivers who were caught with counterfeit cash, so instead the county will handle the case. County police were not aware of the bills actually being passed as real anywhere.

One man, Jose Portillio, got charged with drunk driving, refusal to take a Breathalyzer test, possession of fictitious bank notes and possession of a false work card. The other man, Ronald Virto, was charged with possessing more than ten fictitious bank notes, passing fictitious bank notes, and drunk driving charges.

Many times DUI arrests lead to additional charges. This appears to be one of those cases, when one offense clues police onto another and a DUI suspect must answer additional charges, too.

Kelly Moss, a resident of Germantown, Tennessee, is facing DUI charges after drinking more vanilla than she could handle.

CBS News reports that Moss’ car had jumped up over the curb and both of the front wheels were on the curb at a middle school. She narrowly missed hitting a telephone pole.

The police found Moss slumped over the wheel, apparently unable to stand, according to KWGN news. The National Ledger adds that according to a police affidavit, Moss’s speech was also slurred and she refused to comply with field sobriety tests or blood alcohol tests.

But her breath gave Moss away. Police report that she smelled strongly of vanilla. After searching her car they found a receipt for two 8-oz. bottles of the common baking ingredient, reports ABC News.

Vanilla extract is 35 percent alcohol by volume. When doled out by the teaspoon for chocolate chip cookies it’s harmless.

Moss was using slightly more, though she didn’t drink her vanilla straight. She mixed almost an entire bottle of the stuff with Diet Coke first to concoct an atypical cocktail.

According to experts, this is not an uncommon way for alcoholics to “cope” with their alcohol abuse issues.

Sam Palmer, a recovering alcoholic who was at the scene, told ABC News reporters that abusers would try to get their drugs any way they could, including mouthwash, Geritol, and Robitussin.

Drug counselor Carolyn Bryant agreed, “Instead of the drug that may be their drug of choice, that may be they have been arrested for or got in trouble about, they take something that will give them that same effect”. She suggested a 12-step program for Moss, and urged women everywhere to get help if they need it.

If Moss thought drinking vanilla would help her avoid a DUI she was wrong.

This is Moss’s third DUI arrest, and she has been charged with driving under the influence and refusing to submit to a blood alcohol test. She will be back in court on August 19 to determine her fate.

Tennessee DUI laws call for up to a year in prison, $10,000 in fines, and the judge may order an ignition interlock device installed at his discretion. She is also subject to vehicle seizure or forfeit, and may have to attend DUI school.

Hopefully, Ms. Moss will get things turned around, and this DUI will be her last. And hopefully, she will stick to the proper use of vanilla from here on out: Dessert.

After an eight-day trial, an Illinois jury has convicted Sandra Vasquez of aggravated drunken driving and reckless homicide in the deaths of five teens.

On February 11, 2007, about 30 teens were found partying in a Suburban Chicago home. A parent broke up the party and sent the teens home. Vasquez’s younger sister was at the party, and when Vasquez arrived to pick her up, seven other teens asked Vasquez to drive them home. Vasquez agreed, and the teens literally piled into her small sedan.

According to the Chicago Tribune, two teenagers were sharing the front passenger seat, four other teens were jammed into the back seat, and two other teenagers were on top of those teenagers’ laps.

A few minutes later, as the car was driving 70 mph down the highway, Vasquez swerved and then veered into a light pole. The two teens in the front of the car, and the two laying on the laps of the teens in back died instantly. One of the other teens died eight days later from his injuries. Vasquez and the other three teens, including her sister, also suffered injuries.

Vasquez admitted that she may have had as many as four drinks, but said she was not drunk. Chicago Breaking News reports that expert testimony showed that her blood alcohol level could have been as high as 0.124, putting her well over the legal limit. However, her blood alcohol level could have been as low as 0.04, the defense argued, because her liver was damaged in the accident, making testing difficult.

Vasquez was arrested and charged with 10 counts of aggravated drunken driving leading to death, six counts of aggravated drunken driving causing serious bodily harm, and five counts of reckless homicide. She spent the three years between the accident and trial out on bail by posting her parents’ home as collateral. She has lived “like a saint” since the accident, according to the Beacon News, spending her time taking care of her children, four and eight years old, and adhering to the rules of her probation.

The jury finally delivered its verdict on the crash on Wednesday, June 30: Guilty on 21 counts. Some members of the jury were visibly crying, clearly upset by what they considered their civic duty, reported the Naperville Sun. Most of the families of the victims consider the guilty verdict to be justice, but feel sympathy for Vasquez.

Vasquez’s attorney points out, however, that a woman trying to do the right thing by clearly intoxicated teenagers is also a victim of this terrible situation, and plans to ask for probation based on extreme circumstances. The District Attorney has already said that he will not cooperate with this request.

Ms. Vasquez’s bail has already been revoked, though she was given the chance to call her two children before being sent to jail. She will be sentenced in August and could face a maximum sentence of up to twenty-eight years behind bars.

University of Georgia Athletic Director Damon Evans has since issued a public apology and resigned from his position following his arrest on DUI charges, according to the Atlanta Journal-Consititution.

The resignation followed a conference call that Evans had with members of the school’s executive committee of the athletic association’s board of directors. Evans offered his “sincerest apology” to University of Georgia fans, student-athletes, coaches and officials, as well as to his wife.

“It had been my hope since taking the job in 2004 that I would have a long career at UGA,” Evans said. “But because of a serious mistake in judgment, that won’t be the case, and I understand that I have a long road to rebuilding my reputation and career.”

Evans, who was only 34-years-old when he was hired as the school’s athletic director in 2004, was arrested in Atlanta, late at night. He was charged with DUI and with failure to maintain a lane. A companion of his was also arrested at the time, for disorderly conduct. Evans claimed that the woman, Courtney Fuhrmann, was just a friend of his, while Fuhrmann said that she had been seeing the athletic director for “only a week or so,” according to the Associated Press.

Evans recently met with a lawyer, Edward Tolley, of the Athens, Georgia, law firm Cook, Noell, Tolley, Bates and Michael.

“I explained to Damon in general terms what the law is,” said Tolley. “I’m sending him to somebody who is an expert with the law in this area and familiar with the Atlanta judicial system. Local representation is important in cases like this.”

Tolley is associated with the Georgia Athletic Association, so he recommended that Evans seek individual counsel to handle the DUI case. Tolley recommended the lawyer Steve Weiner, whom he called an expert in the field of DUI arrest.

Evans, who is married with two kids, was the first African-American athletic director hired at the University of Georgia. There is no word from UGA officials about a replacement for Evans in the athletic director position.

Evans will receive three months in severance pay after his resignation, as well as a $100,000 longevity bonus.

A recent DUI case in San Diego was declared a mistrial after a single juror held off from deciding whether the defendant was behind the wheel when a car struck another vehicle and killed four people, according to 10 News.

Deanna Fridley was on trial in the case in which the four were killed in Pala Casino, California. Fridley claimed that she was not the driver of the car that got into the deadly December 14, 2007, accident, and one of the jurors in the case would not conclude that it was her, leading to the mistrial.

The jurors in the case informed the judge that they had reached an 11-1 deadlock. They had been apart for a holiday break, and on their return they announced that they could not come to a unanimous agreement on the charges.

Fridley was also accused of DUI causing injury and misdemeanor driving on a suspended license.

Judge Runston Maino, serving in the case, declined to enact a motion by the prosecution to replace the juror with an alternate juror. “You haven’t failed as jurors; you haven’t failed as individuals,” he told the jurors in light of their lack of unanimity.

Fridley, 26, faced four 15-years-to-life sentences if she had been convicted in the case. Her defense attorney, James Boyd, addressed the media after the mistrial was declared, saying that he was “really happy” with the result. “My question,” he said, “is how is it that 11 of them actually thought she was driving? It’s a real who-done-it. Was she driving or not?”

A retrial of the case could come in six to eight months, and there will be a status update in July.

According to prosecutors, Fridley was driving over 85 miles per hour and swerved over the lane divider before crashing into and killing Luis De Santiago, his wife Lina, and Luis Baez and his wife Rubi. They also claimed that Fridely had spent the day smoking meth and drinking with a friend. Fridley was allegedly driving a GMC Yukon, while the victims were in a Toyota Camry.

Fridley testified that she had switched seats with her friend before the crash. The friend, Anthony Boles, denies this claim.

Fridley will remain in custody, and her bail is set at $1 million.