It's not the first time we've heard about counterfeit money, but several people say it's the first time they've heard of a fake one dollar bill.

WYMT’s Marie Luby spoke to the clerk who took what she calls a counterfeit bill and wonders why one dollar could be worth so much trouble.

“It just doesn't look real, it looks like a play dollar bill actually,” Hope Branham said.

That's what employees at the Natural Bridge Shell station in Slade are saying about the dollar bill Hope Branham found when she was counting her drawer Tuesday morning.

“On the ends here you can tell where it's white, where it's been copied onto a regular paper. and here's where we marked it with the pen, and it's black,” Branham said.

Branham says this ink shows up a yellowish-brown on real bills, and black on the fakes.

Banking officials say U-S Secret Service agents are the only ones who can officially say whether money is counterfeit.

Community Trust Bank Marketing President Janice King says in her 30 years in the business, a fake dollar bill would be a first.

“Sometimes with the larger bills you'll see several at one time and then you won't see them for a while, but in the event that we do get a counterfeit bill at the bank we have to keep it and fill out a report and send it to the secret service,” King said.

Now employees and customers here are wondering, why would anyone bother to fake a single dollar?

“I wouldn't want to go to jail for something like that it'd be more than that if I was gonna go to jail,” Branham said.

Branham says no one will go to jail this time, because they didn't want to call police over a dollar.

They say they'd rather someone try to steal a small cup of coffee, than a tank of gas.

Hope Branham says she's come across several one dollar bills in the past few months that she thinks are fake and employees are now checking every single bill that's handed to them no matter how small.