Whitney Houston may have felt like a million dollar bill when she found love, but two Tennessee women probably weren’t feeling as hot after they got arrested for trying to use a $1 million note at the Dollar General in Maryville, a suburb of Knoxville. Amanda McCormick, 39, and Linda Johnson, 61, rocked up to the store full of confidence that they’d be able to purchase their items with the counterfeit bill, but they were caught out by a very observant Dollar General employee and the police were called.
- McCormick claimed she got the bill in the mail. According to a Blount County Sheriff’s Office arrest report obtained by The Smoking Gun, McCormick told an officer that the $1 million bill suddenly came “in the mail from a church” one day out of the blue. However, she couldn’t give any further information as to what church supposedly provided the bill and why on earth they would send such a thing.
- She also insisted that the items she was trying to buy were going to a good cause. McCormick was attempting to purchase a “shopping cart full of various items from inside the store, including several gift cards to various businesses.” However, she wasn’t trying to use the counterfeit note for selfish purposes. According to McCormick, she was “going to use the money to purchase items for care packages for homeless individuals.”
- Johnson claimed to have no knowledge about the bill at all. In fact, she told officers that, as a relative of McCormick’s, she “was only riding with Ms. McCormick to run errands today.” It’s unclear whether there was any truth to this claim or whether Johnson was in on the attempted scam.
- They didn’t actually get arrested. While the sheriff’s office did classify the incident as “fraud by false pretenses,” instead of being arrested, McCormick and Johnson “were issued a verbal no trespass warning” and told they were not welcome back at that Dollar General location in the future.
