Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation records show that a 38-year-old woman was arrested Sunday for forging money. According to reports, she tried to chow down on the fake bills to hide them.
Zipporah Abraham of North Miami Beach, Fla., was caught trying to use the fake currency to pay for items at Walmart, according to a report from Local 10 News that cited an arrest report from the Miami-Dade Police Department.
Per the report it was around 10:20 a.m. when she tried to use the bills, which alerted the store’s loss prevention officers. It also said that, since she had a history of theft arrests in Miami-Dade County, loss prevention officers noticed her on CCTV footage.
This footage allegedly shows Abraham concealing several items in a storage bin and pacing back and forth in the store. After she tried to flee, officers stopped her with around $865 worth of items in the bin.
“As an MDPD officer asked her to remove her jewelry before placing her into custody, Abraham put about $200 worth of the fake bills into her mouth and tried swallowing them, police said,” per the Local 10 report.
According to Live Science, that move might have also landed Abraham in jail if the currency was real. A part of the U.S. Code states that defacing currency can result in fines and jail time, said the outlet. However, it has been done before – Time reported in 2017 that a Colombian woman who allegedly “swallowed more than $7,000 during an argument with her husband had $5,700 in U.S. $100 bills removed from her stomach in surgery.”
In Florida, Abraham was arrested on felony charges of grand theft and uttering forged bills, records show. These records indicated that she was still being held at Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center on a $10,000 bond, as of Wednesday.