A man was caught trying to deceive a restaurant by using a counterfeit note with a value of £700 to pay for his meal of a burger and side dishes. The incident took place at Michael’s Bar and Grill in Manchester, Missouri, where the diner, driving a Lexus, handed a fake $1,000 bill to the cashier to settle his bill. The server mentioned that the man initially requested change from a $100 note to cover the meal, which was approximately $40 in total.
The restaurant employee, Kristina Moriarty, discovered the deception when the man vanished after she went to get change. In place of the genuine payment, she found the fake “ancestor money” note, which is non-currency paper used in Chinese culture for ancestral offerings.
The restaurant had recently enhanced its surveillance measures due to previous dine-and-dash incidents and captured the fraudster on camera during the attempted deception. Moriarty revealed that such incidents had occurred multiple times, prompting the owners to invest in improved security systems.
Michael’s Bar and Grill employs various security measures, including cameras, license plate readers, and facial recognition technology, to combat dine-and-dash thefts. The establishment also posts footage of such incidents on social media to deter potential offenders, with the latest instance involving the Lexus owner being publicly shared on their Facebook page.
Following the exposure, the person who had attempted to pay with the fake bill returned to the restaurant to settle the outstanding bill and apologized for the deception. Despite eventually paying, the recurring issue has impacted the workers financially, affecting their earnings from tips. Dawn Lamb, a bartender with 32 years of experience, emphasized the importance of preventing such incidents to safeguard the business and its employees.