COURT OF APPEALS OF VIRGINIA
Present: Chief Judge Felton , Judges Clements and Beales Argued at Richmond, Virginia

LEON NATHANIEL PRATT, JR. MEMORANDUM OPINION * BY v. Record No. 1654-05-2 CHIEF JUDGE WALTER S. FELTON, JR. DECEMBER 28, 2006 COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA

FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE CITY OF FREDERICKSBURG J. Peyton Farmer, Judge Designate Tara-Beth Coleman, Assistant Pub lic Defender (Offi ce of the Public Defender, on brief), for appellant. Michael T. Judge, Senior Assi stant Attorney Ge neral (Robert F. McDonnell, Attorney General, on brief), for appellee.
Appellant Leon Nathanie l Pratt, Jr. appeals his conviction for uttering coun terfeit currency in violation of Code § 18 .2-170, conte nding the evidence was in sufficient to prove: (1) that the bills were in fact counterfeit, and (2) that he knew th e bills were counterfeit wh en he passed them. For the reasons that follow, we affirm appellant’s conviction. I. BACKGROUND When the sufficiency of the evidence to sust ain a criminal conviction is challenged on appeal, we “view the evidence in the light most favorable to the Commonwealth, the party prevailing below, and grant all re asonable inferences fairly dedu cible therefrom.” Clifton v. Commonwealth , 22 Va. App. 178, 180, 46 8 S.E.2d 155, 156 (1996) (citing Higginbotham v. Commonwealth , 216 Va. 349, 352, 218 S. E.2d 534, 537 (1975)).

* Pursuant to Code § 17.1-413, this opin ion is not designated for publication.- 2 - So viewed, the evidence proved that on May 24, 2004, appe llant entered an auto parts store in Fredericksburg and attempted to purchase me rchandise from cashier Katrina Cox with five twenty-dollar bill s. Cox noticed that the b ills felt thicker than leg itimate curren cy, lacked a watermark and strip nor mally found on the back of twenty-dollar bills, and th at one of the bills was not cut straight. Based upon the a ppearance of the bills and her el even years of re tail experience, Cox believed the bills were counterfeit. When she informed appellant that the bills were not real and that she could not give them back to him, appellant told her that he had obtained the bills from the bank. Cox told appellant that she needed to notify the manager. Appellant became excited and continually asked Cox to gi ve the bills back to him, going so far as to follow Cox to the garage part of the store where she located the manager. Cox and the store manager, Mark Fuqua, went into the store’s office. Once they confirmed the bills were counterfeit, they called the police. While Cox and Fuqua were in the store’s office, appellant returned to the store, got back in line, and purchased the merchandise from another cashier. Appellant then left the store without making ad ditional attempts to obtain the bills. Cox and Fuqua followed appellant and retrieved the lic ense plate number of th e vehicle in which he departed. When Officer Nikki Gentry examined the five twenty-dollar bills a ppellant gave Cox, she immediately noticed that the bills felt thicke r and heavier than other cu rrency she had previously handled. She also observed that the bills lack ed watermarks an d colored threads. Fuqua gave Officer Gentry the license plate nu mber he had obtained. The officer was able to get a message to appellant asking him to contact he r. Appellant called Officer Gentry and arranged to meet her for an interview. During the interview, appella nt waived his Miranda rights and told Officer Gentry that he had obtained th e bills from an unknown person at a bus station in North Carolina in exchange for a one-hundred- dollar bill. He admitted he passed the bills to C ox in order to purchase- 3 - parts for his car, but deni ed knowing that the bill s were counterfeit. When Officer Gentry asked appellant why he did not wait at the auto parts stor e for the police to arrive if he believed the bills were real, he replied, “What were the police going to do?” At his bench trial, appellant testified that he told Cox he obtained the bills from the bank because he knew he had gone to the bank, but di d not remember that he got change at the bus station until his intervie w with Officer Gentry. The trial cour t subsequently found appellant guilty of uttering counterfeit currency. II. ANALYSIS A. Counterfeit Ch aracter of the Bills Appellant first argues the eviden ce was insufficient to allow the trial court to conclude that the bills were counterf eit because the Commonwea lth failed to present an y expert te stimony to establish that condition. Appellant, however, cites no authority in hi s brief to suppor t his argument. Nor did he provide any auth ority in support of his po sition at oral argument. Rule 5A:20 requires appellant’s brief to contai n “a statement of the questions presented” and “the principles of law, the argument, and the authorities relating to each question presen ted . . . .” Statements unsupported by argument , authority, or citations to th e record do not merit appellate consideration. Buchanan v. Buchanan , 14 Va. App. 53, 56 , 415 S.E.2d 237, 239 (1992). Thus, we will not consider appellant ’s first question presented. B. Appellant’s K nowledge that the B ills were Counterfeit Appellant next argues the Commonwealth’s evid ence was insufficient to prove he knew that the five twenty-dollar bills he passed to Co x were counterfeit. For a defendant to be convict ed of uttering a counterfeit bill, the evidence must not only show that he passed counterfeit currency, it must also show that he knew it to be counterfeit at the time he passed it. For, as wa s stated in Finn v. Commonwealth , 26 Va. (5 Rand.) 701, 710 (Gen. Ct. 1827):- 4 - “The passing [of] a counterfeit note . . . may be of itself a perfectly innocent transaction; the guilt consists in passing it, knowing it to be counterfeit. If no other ci rcumstances than those of the transaction itself are given in ev idence, it would be impossible to ascertain whether it was passed with this guilty knowledge , or not. Hence Courts have been driven to the necessity in such cases . . . of admitting evidence of the conduct of the prisoner, so that from his conduct on one occasion, the [fact finder] may infer his knowledge on another . . . .” Fitzgerald v. Commonwealth , 219 Va. 266, 270-71, 246 S.E.2d 899, 902 (1978) (emphasis in original). It is well settled that “‘th e element of guilty kn owledge may be supplie d by circumstantial evidence . . . .’” Covil v. Commonwealth , 268 Va. 692, 695, 604 S. E.2d 79, 81 (2004) (quoting Roberts v. Commonwealth , 230 Va. 264, 270, 337 S. E.2d 255, 259 (1985)). Indeed, where “[g]uilty knowledge is an essential element of the offense as defined by the statute, . . . ‘absent proof of an admission against interest, such knowledge n ecessarily must be shown by circumstantial evidence.’” Spit zer v. Commonwealth , 233 Va. 7, 9, 353 S.E.2d 711, 713 (1987) (q uoting Lewis v. Commonwealth , 225 Va. 497, 503, 303 S.E. 2d 890, 893 (1983)). Circ umstantial evid ence is as competent as direct eviden ce to prove the elements of a crime so long as the evidence as a whole excludes all reasonable h ypotheses of innocence flowing from it. See Tucker v. Commonwealth , 18 Va. App. 141, 143, 442 S.E.2d 419, 420 (1994) . However, while the Commonwealth’s evidence must exclude all reasonable hypot heses of innocence, “[t]he h ypotheses which must be thus excluded are those which flow from the evidence itself, and not from the imaginations of defense counsel.” Cook v. Commonwealth , 226 Va. 427, 43 3, 309 S.E.2d 32 5, 329 (1983). The trial court was not required to believe appe llant’s testimony of ho w he acquired the five twenty-dollar bills. “T he credibility of the witn esses and the weight acc orded the evidence are matters solely for the fact finder who has the opportunityto see and hear that evidence as it is presented.” Sandoval v. Commonwealth , 20 Va. App. 133, 138, 455 S.E.2d 730, 732 (1995).- 5 - Therefore, the trial court, as the fact finder, was entitled to “d raw the reasonable inference that [appellant’s conflicting] explanatio n[s] w[ere] made falsely in an ef fort to conceal his guilt.” Covil , 268 Va. at 696, 604 S. E.2d at 82. See also Marable v. Commonwealth , 27 Va. App. 505, 509-10, 500 S.E.2d 233, 235 (1998) (a fact finder “is entitled to disbelieve the self-serving testimony of the accused and . . . conclude that the accu sed is lying to conceal his guilt”). Given appellant’s conduct in repeatedly atte mpting to get the bill s back from Cox, the physical appearance of the bills wh ich immediately identified them to Cox, Fuqua, and Officer Gentry as counterfeit, and appellant’s inconsistent statements to Cox and Officer Gentry as to how he obtained the bills, a rational fact finder could reasonab ly infer that appellan t knew the bills were counterfeit when he passed them to Cox. CompareCarlton v. Commonwealth , 23 Va. App. 629, 478 S.E.2d 730 (1 996) (holding the Commonweal th failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused passed a lotter y ticket knowing it had been altered where the store clerk did not observe that the ticket had been altered, and the record show ed that an expert was re quired to determine that the ticket in evidence had been altered). Accordingly, the circum stantial evidence was suff icient to exclude all reasonable hypotheses of appellant’s innocence. Appellant’s conviction, therefore, is affirmed. Affirmed.