An 11-year-old boy who was selling at a lemonade stand at a busy intersection near his home in Washington, discovered that a man had bought snacks and drinks worth about $20 from him and paid with a fake bill. The money from the profits was planned to be donated to people in war-torn Ukraine. Surfers collected 25 thousand dollars for the boy
11-year-old Jeremy Rizhunkov received a fake hundred dollar bill from a bad-hearted person who took advantage of his ignorance of real bills. The boy, whose extended family lives in Ukraine, sold candy and lemonade at a makeshift stand, and the profits were supposed to be donated to people in war-torn Ukraine. The fraudulent customer received an excess of $80, and left the premises.
But suspicions began to haunt Jeremy after the customer walked away from the stand where, in addition to lemonade, he sells popcorn, cotton candy and a variety of sodas, TV channel KCPQ reported. The $100 bill the man gave him was not real, and its color seemed “off.” Jeremy went to a nearby gas station, where the seller confirmed to him that the bill he received was fake.
The boy reported the scam to the Everett Police Department in Washington, and gave them a description of the suspect. The crook didn’t know that while filming for his YouTube channel, Jeremy took a video of the purchase and the suspect. The police posted a still image of these shots on the Facebook account. Although there were two men there, police described only one of them as a suspect.
Jeremy’s neighbor Amy Stanfoot started a fundraising campaign to help Jeremy recover his losses. She set a goal of raising $250. Within a day she raised about $1,800. By Tuesday, $13,000, finally about 1,100 people had donated nearly $25,000 to help rebuild his business.
The police published a post on Facebook and called on anyone who recognizes the man who bought with a fake note to report him. “Can you identify this person who rescued an 11 year old boy who runs a lemonade stand over the summer, 11 year old Jeremy was working to raise money to set up a lemonade stand on Beverly Boulevard. As he worked under the scorching sun trying to make some money, the suspect in the picture gave him a bill of $100 for a drink but asked for an exact excess.”