A woman attempted to buy some fruit with a fake bill, but she swallowed the piece of paper after the cashier and store owner caught her in the act, according to Chinese online news outlet Pear Videos.
No police response was reported, though video footage showed the store owner on a phone call which may have been to police on July 20. The unidentified owner and cashier operate the fruit shop in Nantong City in China’s central Jiangsu Province.
“I’ve already caught her,” the owner says on the phone, according to a video released online by Pear Videos on July 23. “She stole back the fake money.”
“She ate it!”
Paying With Fake Money
“When she came in, she brought a melon over. She asked me how much it costs, and I said 8.8 yuan ($00.12), then she gave me a 100 yuan ($14.50) bill,” the cashier told Pear Videos. 100 yuan bills in China are used similarly to $20 notes in the United States.The cashier said she didn’t have enough change, so she handed the 100 yuan bill back to the woman. The woman then gave the cashier a 5 yuan ($0.75) bill.
“I said that wasn’t enough, and she said she heard me wrong,” the cashier told Pear Videos. She repeated the price, and the woman once again gave her a 100 yuan bill.
“My first impression was that something was wrong with the bill,” the cashier said. “How fake was it? You could feel the watermark like there were gaps in it, not smooth at all.”
The cashier said that her boss happened to be in the shop that day, according to Pear Videos. The video shows the cashier arguing with the woman, then grabbing her and blocking the exit. Meanwhile the store owner makes a call on her phone, which may have been to the police.
“There’s no way I’m letting you go today!” the store owner shouts at the woman, according to the security video.
“Then do you know what she did? She snatched the fake bill out of my hand and ate it!” the cashier told Pear Videos.
The cashier and the store owner can be seen confronting and struggling with the woman in the video. When she puts the bill inside her mouth, the store owner grabs her neck, and they tell her to spit it out.
After the woman swallowed the fake paper bill, she acted as if she had done nothing wrong.
The story generated some comments on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, mostly criticizing the woman’s behavior.
“[She] even knows to destroy the evidence. How vile,” commented Weibo user “Sweet and Sour Meatball.”
The report did not mention if the police got involved in the incident.
