COMMENTS &CURIOSITIES;:

Holy cat. I leave for a couple of days, and the whole place goes bonkers. I am not where you are. I’m far away, in a city where Broadway takes you to Times Square not Triangle Square, and they have a Wall Street if you’re into money — but it’s shrinking fast, and pretty soon there won’t be anyone left.

It seems that while I’ve been away, the People Behaving Badly folder has been getting bigger, a lot bigger. The first file — an 18-year old Costa Mesa resident who tried to rob a Stater Bros. supermarket — is strange enough, but his name may be the best part…Victor Hugo.

I’m guessing that if a teenager is going to give a phony name these days he’s probably not going to pick a famous 19th century writer, but I would still ask to see some ID. If somebody tells the cops says his name is Jules Verne, do they say, “…and your address?”

Anyway, Victor Hugo stopped by the Stater Bros. on Baker Street and Fairview Road last week after being seriously over-served, but I guess not seriously enough because he proceeded directly to the liquor aisle and started stuffing bottles into his pants.

It turns out that Stater Bros. has a policy that when you want something they have, they prefer you bring it to the checkout counter and pay for it rather than stuffing it in your pants. It didn’t take long for employees to spot Victor Hugo and his clanky pants because stashing liquor bottles in your shorts and getting out the door without being noticed is hard.

A brief tussle ensued, during which the store manager grabbed Victor Hugo and took him to the ground, at which point Hugo continued his run of strikingly bad decisions by biting the store manager on the arm. The police arrived shortly thereafter and had Victor Hugo in handcuffs and sitting on a curb outside the store faster than you can say Veuve Clicquot.

At that point Vic somehow decided that just because his hands were cuffed behind his back didn’t mean he couldn’t make a run for it, which he did. As everyone but Victor could have predicted, it was a really short run as runs go, and ended with Hugo’s nose pressed to the ground once again, this time with cops on top instead of a store manager.

Meanwhile, while Victor Hugo was going two out of three falls at Stater Bros., Costa Mesa police broke up a counterfeit ring that was turning out $50 and $100 bills like they grew on trees.

CMPD and the U.S. Secret Service, which is responsible for tracking down bogus bills and the people who make them, had been watching Jacques Delia and Sheila McCarthy for months while the pair ran their faux money scam out of two houses on Java Road and Coriander Street in Costa Mesa.

Police have linked Delia and McCarthy to some 20 counterfeit bills that were produced by washing $5 bills and reprinting them as $50’s and $100’s, which are worth much more than $5s. Unfortunately for them, the watermark of Abraham Lincoln’s face on a $5 bill cannot be erased.

You can do whatever you want with it. You can wash it, dry it, spray it, iron it, chew on it or get Victor Hugo to pour his beer all over it — Abe Lincoln will still be staring at you — strong, stoic, a great American. Jacques Delia allegedly used some of the funny money to pay for a dental appointment in Huntington Beach, and Sheila McCarthy used her bogus bills for some duds at No Rest For Bridget. I have no idea what that is, but I assume it’s a store. You think we’re done, don’t you? We’re not.

Last Sunday night, Costa Mesa police and the FBI blew open an Internet fraud scam that bilked people out of $3 million, which is a lot; it was based in Romania, which is far away, and resulted in the arrest of two suspects at the Wyndham Hotel in Costa Mesa, which is closer than Romania.

The two suspects arrested at the Wyndham — Hiep Thanh Tran, and his girlfriend, Caroline Tath — were just two of 33 people named in a federal indictment that was read in Los Angeles last week. The ring harvested bank and credit card information through a variety of Internet scams and in turn manufactured phony credit and debit cards, which can get you in a lot of trouble, except there’s no Abraham Lincoln problem.

According to Costa Mesa police and the Feds, the ‘net scammers operated from the U.S., Canada, Pakistan, Portugal and Romania. See? It really is a global village. I think that’s it — Victor Hugo at Stater Bros., Abraham Lincoln and Romania. They’re all connected somehow. I’m just not sure how.

I better get back as soon as possible. It’s just too hard to keep up with it all from this far away. I gotta go.

PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs Sundays. He may be reached at [email protected].