Newmarket town centre shops including Scope, Sue Ryder and Starbucks targeted in fake banknotes scam

Shop staff in Newmarket have been warned to be vigilant after a number of fake banknotes were handed across counters in the town centre.

In the last three weeks two charity shops, a coffee shop, a High Street store and a nail studio are known to have been targeted.

At Scope, in The Guineas, the tricksters visited three times in one day, on each occasion using a £20 note to pay for items costing two or three pounds, a loss to the shop of £51.

In the High Street, the Sue Ryder shop took a fake £20 note for goods with a £3 price tag, the fraudsters getting away with change of £17. Another dud £20 was used at Costa Coffee and a £10 at TT Nails.

A fake note at Starbucks was foiled when a member of staff spotted it and on Monday afternoon a counterfeit £50 note was refused at the till in Savers’ High Street store.

Town Ranger Russell Bradnam who runs the ShopSafe scheme for Newmarket Business Improvement District (BID) has visited all the shops in the town centre to raise awareness and show them what the counterfeit notes look like.

“Some people said they would have spotted the fake notes straight away but others couldn’t tell the difference,” said Russell, who has put images of the fakes on the ShopSafe app.

He said the forged £20s were missing the Queen’s face from a black oval shape on the rear of the note. When held up to the light the large picture of the Queen on the front was clearly visible from the rear and the hologram felt like sellotape.

“The £10 is harder to detect,” said Russell. “The orange colour is the same as a genuine note, but the stripe through the hologram is orange instead of silver. Anyone who has reason to believe they are being offered a fake note should decline to take it.”