Nashville, TN - A local Quick-E-Stop cashier is being lauded as a hero this morning for calling 911 after a customer tried to pay with a 3-foot counterfeit $100 bill.
The incident occurred around 7:30 p.m. on Sunday at the Quick-E-Stop in Smyrna when a man, later identified as Ben Frankford, came to the counter with 40 bags of Nacho Cheese Dorito's and a 2-Liter of Mountain Dew.
"My gut told me something was off right away," Arnold Smith told reporters. "There's no way that one 2-Liter could wash down 40 bags of chips."
Witnesses say that Smith rang up the order and gave Frankford the total. That's when the suspect pulled out the 3-foot bill from under his jacket and handed it to Smith.
The anonymous witness said, "The cashier dude checked that bill really good. He held it up to the light, marked it with a pen...He definitely knew something was up. And when it didn't fit in the register, the game was over."
Smith reportedly told the suspect he needed to grab some nickels from the office and quietly called 911 from the manager's phone. The suspect was gone by the time he returned but he left behind the counterfeit bill and 39 of the 40 bags of chips.
Frankford was later spotted snacking on a park bench a quarter-mile from the store and was taken into custody without incident.
Smith told journalists that despite the outpouring of praise, he is not a hero and simply recalled a tip from his Quick-E-Stop cashier training that says, "If the bill don't fit, it ain't legit."
At the time of this publishing, Frankford was out on $1,000 bond. Initial reports say the bond was paid for with ten 3-foot $100 bills. There's no word yet if they are also counterfeit.