A Brown County woman faces two counts of counterfeiting after police say she exchanged three fake $20 bills for smaller bills at her work.

In July, the Abe Martin Lodge reported several counterfeit $20 bills being cashed at the restaurant.

A manager alerted the cashier to the issue, believing the person who did it was staying at the lodge. When he told the cashier one bill had been taped together, the cashier said she remembered taking a ripped $20 bill that had been taped back together from Kelsey L. Wooton, 21, the probable cause affidavit said.

Indiana Conservation Officer Lt. Tim Beaver interviewed Wooton and she told him that she had exchanged three $20s for smaller bills because she preferred smaller bills.

Wooton told police she had received five $20 bills from a man who owed her money.

After the exchange at the lodge, Wooton tried to use another $20 at the Circle K gas station in Nashville to buy gas and cigarettes, but the clerk refused to take it, the report said. She told Beaver she threw away two more $20 bills at her home after realizing they were fraudulent, the probable cause affidavit said.

The gas station clerk told police she was friends with Wooton and that she refused the bill because a big corner was ripped off and “it didn’t feel right.” The clerk said she had unknowingly accepted a counterfeit $20 bill about a week earlier.

In a follow-up interview with Indiana Conservation Officer Brent Bohbrink, Wooton gave three different stories for why she exchanged the bills for smaller ones at the lodge. One explanation was that it was to pay her mom back for a car payment, the report said.

Bohbrink encouraged Wooton to be honest, and she told him she thought the bills did not look right and decided to “get rid of them,” the affidavit said.

She told Beaver she had planned to reimburse the lodge when she realized the bills were counterfeit.