There have been reports of more than a dozen cases of fake bills throughout the Halifax Regional Municipality and the Annapolis Valley and police say there is likely more funny money out there.

Employees at Manhattan Pizza in Dartmouth are handling cash more carefully than usual after falling victim to fraud.

“We had a woman pass counterfeit $20 bills at our Albro Lake location, so we immediately notified the authorities,” says Manhattan Pizza General Manager George Motz.

The pizza joint wasn’t the only business targeted. Police conducted a search at a metro apartment building and found several hundred dollars of fake money, the equipment used to make it, along with fake bus tickets made to look like those used for Metro Transit buses.

“We’ve certainly passed along the message to operators and to ferry staff as well, that if they see any tickets that they believe are not our regular Metro Transit tickets, that they should report that to transit security,” says Metro Transit spokesperson Tiffany Chase.

Counterfeiting reached a peak in 2006, but has since been declining. Part of the reason is the new bills are more difficult to recreate.

“Every genuine bank note has its own unique serial number and that's a readily identifiable feature for any bank note,” says Detective Const. Dana Drover of the Halifax Regional Police Integrated Financial Crime Section. “So, if for example, a person were to tender more than one bank note of the same denomination and they shared the same serial number, well then that would be a very obvious feature that someone could detect.”

Drover says the best advice for businesses is to make sure staff is familiar with genuine currency, so that they can easily identify the fake stuff.

Four people have now been arrested in this recent rash and more charges are expected.

“There's a lot of businesses, small business, you know, they depend on that money and if they can’t cash that money back at the bank, it's out of their pocket. So it affects their bottom line definitely,” says Motz.

Motz has already ordered black lights for his business, to help prevent his staff from falling victim again.

With files from CTV Atlantic's Kayla Hounsell