A 71-year-old Black woman won a five-figure jackpot but three white bank employees refused to cash her check or give it back to her, a lawsuit alleges.
Lizzie Pugh, a retired Detriot public school employee, won her jackpot on a slot machine during a casino visit with her church.
When she went to Fifth Third Bank in Livonia, Michigan, to deposit her winnings, three white employees said the check was fake and refused to hand it back to her.
“I couldn’t really believe they did that to me,” she told theDetroit Free Press.“I was devastated. I kept asking, ‘How do you know the check is not real?’ ... And they just insisted that it was fraudulent ... I was just terrified.”
The incident occurred in April, and on 29 August, she filed a federal lawsuit alleging racism from the bank staffers.
She finally got back the check later that day and managed to deposit it at a nearby Chase bank.
“To think that maybe they would have police coming and running at me – it was humiliating and stressful,” Ms Pugh said. “For someone to just accuse you of stealing? I’m 71 years old. Why would I steal a check and try to cash it? I just didn’t think anybody would do that.”
When reached by The Independent, the bank declined to comment.
The lawsuit states that Ms Pugh went to a casino with her church group on 9 April. After winning her jackpot, she chose to pay the taxes on her winnings at the casino, which issued a check and cash to Ms Pugh.
The precise amount on the check is not included in the lawsuit, according to the Detroit Free Press.
Two days later, Ms Pugh drove to the Fifth Third Bank to open to deposit the check in a savings account she planned on opening. She was asked to step into an office, where an employee asked where she worked and to see her driver’s license. Ms Pugh handed over the check to the bank staffer.
“She left the room. She came back and she told me that the check was fraudulent, and she could not give it back to me,” Ms Pugh told the paper. “I’m like, ‘Why? It’s not fraudulent.’”
Another employee was called into the office, who also claimed that the check was fraudulent. She also refused to hand it back.
“I told them I wasn’t leaving. You need to call the police. Or better yet, I’ll call myself,” Ms Pugh said.
The two employees left and took the check into the office of a third staffer. Ms Pugh soon followed and was faced with the third employee making the same claim.
She finally got the check back and it was cleared at another bank the next day.
“I was really, really nervous,” she said, remembering the moment she got back in her car. “I had to sit there for a minute. I took a picture of the bank. I had no idea what the address was or anything like that. And then I left.”
Ms Pugh’s niece, Yolanda McGee, 50, pushed her aunt to take legal action.
“I told her, ‘This clearly was a violation of your civil rights. There are laws in place now, where you can fight. Let’s fight this,’” Ms McGee told the Detriot Free Press. “Fifth Third Bank needs to know that they humiliated you. What they did was wrong. And they need to answer for this.”
“I encouraged her. I said, no, no, no, no, no. We are not in 1950s Alabama. We’re not in the Jim Crow era. We are gonna fight. No one’s gonna shame you,” Ms McGee added.
Ms Pugh’s attorney Deborah Gordon told the paper that “what happened to Lizzie was really a heartbreaking situation”.
“Given what she has lived through – and to have a happy moment, something she enjoyed, be ruined by being humiliated?” she added.
“This is just extremely disheartening,” Ms Gordon said. “It’s really unfortunate these stereotypes continue to exist right here in our metro area.”
