A Negro woman from Detroit says she was told by the Fifth Third Bank that she could not deposit a $12,200 stop for casino win because it was “fraudulent.” Now, she’s suing the bank for racial discrimination. But Fifth Third wants the example dismissed because it claims it was all a misunderstanding.
Lizzie Pugh, 71, hit the Soaring Eagle Casino in Mount Pleasant on Apr 9 as parting of a church outing, according to her lawsuit. While there, the retired schooling worker won the jackpot on a slot machine. She chose to pay off taxes on her profits at the casino. Staff cut off her a cheque and gave her a small amount of cash.
On Apr 11, she visited a Fifth Third separate inward Livonia, Metro Detroit, to clear an answer for to sedimentation the check. But she claims trine different staff members told her that it was fake. The bank’s employees refused to let her open an account and would not gift her the check up on back.
“I couldn’t really believe they did that to me,” Pugh told The Motor City Free Press. “I was devastated. I kept asking, ‘How fare you experience the chip is not real?’ … And they just now insisted that it was fraudulent … I was just now terrified.”
Check Your Privilege
The arrest was eventually returned to Pugh after she threatened to call the police. She sued the camber under Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act, which prohibits racial favouritism inward public places. Her case is asking for an unspecified amount of restitution from Fifth Third.
But inwards a Midweek motion to send away the suit, Fifth Third’s lawyers denied all the allegations. They exact the branch was but attempting to verify the check into with the cassino as section of its anti-fraud protocols. They cite records of a speech sound ring from the camber to the gambling casino on the afternoon inwards question.
“From our review of the claims, we trust our employees’ actions were well-meaning and make been misinterpreted,” Fifth Third spokesman Ed Lloyd said Wednesday.
‘Bunch of Bull****’
But Pugh’s lawyer, Deborah Gordon, told the DFP that was “a bunch of bull****.” She claims the bank building treated her client severely because she is Black.
They refused the dealings with her and she had to leave alone and go game elsewhere,” Gordon said. “Why couldn’t they unfastened an account for her? Obviously, they assumed fraud, and they didn’t want to do business with her.
“Why ut you tell someone thither is a fraudulent check? If I walked inwards there, I highly uncertainty they’d recite me that it’s fraudulent,” added Gordon, who is white.
Gordon said that once Pugh finally got her checkout back, she took it push down the street to Chase, where it was recognized immediately.