Texas woman hands over $100 at Chick-fil-A, then a worker refuses to give it back saying he was legally allowed to keep it

A wild situation unfolded at a Chick-fil-A drive-thru recently, where an employee confiscated a customer’s $100 bill after declaring it counterfeit. It sounds like something out of a comedy sketch, but for TikTok user Bunny Garcia, who shared the story on her account, it was a genuinely stressful ordeal that highlights a really bizarre rule businesses are advised to follow when dealing with suspected fake cash.

Garcia was visiting the fast-food chain with her family and decided to pay with cash, specifically a crisp $100 bill. That’s when the problems began. According to Garcia, the young worker returned to her car shortly after taking the money and told her she needed another way to pay, per Bro Bible.

It isn’t because they stopped serving breakfast or anything. “Unfortunately, do you have another way to pay? Because that $100 was counterfeit,” Garcia recounts the worker saying. The employee claimed he’d run the bill through the location’s bill reader twice and that the machine “didn’t beep,” which he said proved the money was fake. Garcia was understandably shocked, especially since she had just withdrawn that money from the bank the day before.

If you have a counterfeit bill, then it can be taken, with some stipulations

“I got that money out of the bank yesterday,” she stated. “I’ve been shopping from the same envelope that the bank gave me of hundred-dollar bills all day long and this kid wants to tell me that the last $100 I grab happens to be the counterfeit one? Like, the odds!”

When Garcia asked for the bill back so she could inspect it and return it to her bank, the situation got even worse. The employee flat-out refused, telling her that “when stores encounter counterfeit money, they are obligated, bound by law, to keep it and hang on to it and turn it in.” He insisted they weren’t allowed to give it back to the customer.

As noted by the Los Angeles Times, businesses are indeed advised to confiscate any bills they suspect are counterfeit and then notify the police and the Secret Service immediately. However, they cannot stop you from taking a picture of the bill as proof of what happened.

If the bill is taken for further inspection, even if it’s eventually found to be real, there’s a significant likelihood you simply won’t get that cash back. That’s a rough deal if you ask me, especially if you’re certain you received it legitimately from a banking institution. The good news is that if you document the loss, you might be able to treat it as a “theft loss” and write it off on your taxes, provided you didn’t knowingly try to pass a fake bill.

Knowing the bill was genuine, Garcia wasn’t backing down. She called her husband for advice, who told her to demand the money back to take a photo of the serial number, specifically so she could inform the bank.

“Otherwise, I’m calling the police, because you guys took a hundred dollars from me,” Garcia recalls telling the employee. Thankfully, the situation resolved quickly after Garcia’s strong stance. A “real manager” finally came out and confirmed that the $100 bill was absolutely genuine. She explained that the initial manager Garcia had spoken with was “new.”

Garcia could not believe that the younger employee tried to make her leave the drive-thru line twice without her money or any proof of the transaction. Always get proof and remember, if it seems off, it likely is. This isn’t the first time Chick-fil-A did something sketchy.