Mansfield woman feared being arrested after ASDA told her legitimate banknotes were fake

Gemma Godfrey, from Mansfield, visited the Forrest Town Asda at around 8 pm on August 22 and was shocked when the cashier accused her of paying for the shopping with fake notes.

Staff at the store began scratching the notes and told Gemma that they were fake before asking her to hand over any other notes she had, amounting to £70 and leaving her out of pocket for the weekend.

The woman who suffers from anxiety was told that the police would be informed, which led to her fearing she would be arrested.

Gemma said: “The woman on the check out was waving my money in the air like she just won the lottery and the rest of the staff made me feel like a criminal for no reason.

“I suffer with anxiety and depression, which has been deeply affected by this, putting immense stress on my family as I am now confused by money and still feel that I will be questioned when using cash.

“I no longer go out; this has traumatised me.”

Gemma added: “The most damaging part of all of this is it was totally unnecessary.

“If the staff had used a counterfeit pen or UV light like I asked them to instead of scratching at the notes as if they were defacing a scratchcard, they would have saved us the turmoil and outright humiliation walking out of a store without our money as if we were criminals.”

A few days after the incident, the store contacted Gemma to inform her that there had been a mistake and invited her down to collect the genuine banknotes that had been confiscated.

A spokesperson for Asda emailed Gemma to say: “I'm sorry to learn of your experience whilst in our Mansfield store, this is not the service we expect for our customers, and I'm sorry for how this has made you feel.

“We are continuously looking at how we can improve and are always grateful for customers feedback like yours.

“We treat all complaints made of this nature extremely seriously, and any action taken will be in line with our company standards and processes.”