Jailed over $100 bill, Charlotte doctor says she was targeted because she’s black
Cordula Lutz and her mother had this tradition: Every time the Charlotte physician visited her childhood home in Maryland, her mom would give her one or more $100 bills.
During Lutz’s trip home last June, Lutz’s mother handed her two.
One of them sent the doctor to jail.
According to her new federal lawsuit, Lutz says she was whisked away from a 2019 Music Factory concert in handcuffs and charged with passing counterfeit currency.
The family medicine specialist claims that the currency had been examined at the venue and was found to be authentic.
Nonetheless, she spent a night in jail, even though she says she repeatedly told the arresting officers that she was a doctor and that she would gladly make good on her beer tab if somehow her mother’s gift was a fake.
Her civil complaint alleges that she was singled out for malicious prosecution, false imprisonment, as well as an illegal search and seizure due to her race. And she accuses the city of Charlotte, three Charlotte-Mecklenburg police officers, and the owners and operators of the concert venue of contributing to her ordeal. She is asking for a jury trial.
“This is really about accountability,” said Lutz’s attorney, Alesha Brown of Charlotte. “People of color experience these issues every day. Many of them have either brushed it off or were left feeling very frustrated but did not know a way to hold people responsible.
“No one should have to deal with the trauma of these types of allegations and consequences ... It is our hope that others will feel it’s OK to hold individuals accountable, even if it means holding the city of Charlotte accountable or even if it means holding Charlotte-Mecklenburg police accountable.”
Attorneys for the city, the police officers and the two businesses — Live Nation Entertainment, Inc., which manages the Charlotte Metro Credit Union Amphitheater, and DSL Events, which Brown says ran the concessions — did not respond to Observer emails seeking comment.
Lutz, though, told the Observer she still suffers nightmares from her experiences, which ran on for several months of court hearings before the counterfeit charge was finally dropped. The lawsuit claims police lacked probable cause to search and arrest Lutz in the first place.
“The way I was treated was inhumane, and I believe the way I was treated was based on the color of my skin,” she said in an emailed response to a list of Observer questions.
“I have worked very hard for everything I have, and I am not a criminal.”
Am I being ‘Punk’d?’
The $100 bill is one of the world’s most popular currencies.
Today, there are more in circulation than their $1 counterparts, largely because the bigger denomination has become a favorite with criminals, according to the Washington Post.
Illegal enterprises such as drugs, human trafficking and money laundering percolate on cash, and $1 million in so-called “C notes” can be carried — and hidden — in a medium-sized suitcase, the Post says.
The $100 bill is also widely counterfeited, particularly overseas where an estimated 80 percent of the more than $13.4 billion of the bills in circulation now reside.
Lutz, a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh Medical School, says she has practiced family medicine in Charlotte since 2009. On her hospital website, her patients rate her 4.7 out of 5. One wrote: “This is one of the best doctors I have ever had in my entire life.”
On June 16, still carrying the two $100s she received from her mother, Lutz took an Uber to the Music Factory to meet some friends for a performance by rapper Jon Bellion, an artist she says she admired but had never heard live.
She arrived early. Her friends were nowhere in sight. So Lutz says she went to the bar for a beer. She says she rarely uses cash, but this time she reached for one of her mother’s bills.
“I just thought ... it would be a great night to use it and treat myself,” she told the Observer.
According to Lutz, the bartender checked the bill and marked it before putting it in the cash register and counting out her change. She says she grabbed her beer and went looking for her party.
When she found them, they took their seats about 10 rows from the stage. Soon, the lawsuit alleges, they had company: An employee approached Lutz and asked to see her ticket.
Lutz was the only African American member of her group — and the only one who had to prove that she belonged in her seat, the lawsuit claims.
There were more visitors to come. At 7:45 p.m., about 90 minutes after she paid for her beer, three police officers walked up. The lawsuit says one of them was Kia McKenny. The other two remain unidentified and are listed as Jane and John Doe in the lawsuit.
“Ma’am, you need to come with us,” one of them said, according to the lawsuit.
When Lutz asked where they were taking her, she was cut off. “Just keep walking,” one of the officers said, the lawsuit claims.
Outside the amphitheater, the officers told Lutz she was under arrest for using a counterfeit bill to buy her beer.
“I thought it was a joke,” Lutz told the Observer. “Like there was going to be cameras and Ashton Kutcher (former host of the MTV prank show, “Punk’d”) was going to be coming out.”
Lutz said she knew better once she was handcuffed and put in the back of a police cruiser.
“That’s when I started to cry.”
‘She’s a doctor?’
In the cruiser, Lutz said she told the officer holding her driver’s license that she was a doctor and that she should Google her name for confirmation.
She also said she asked to speak to the manager that night at the amphitheater. The officer left the car for a period, then returned. “She told me she tried to get the manager to talk to me and/or drop the charges and he refused,” Lutz said.
At the Mecklenburg County jail, she asked an officer if the cuffs could be removed so she could use the restroom. The officer refused. “It was so embarrassing for a stranger to have to pull my pants back up for me because I was unable to do so on my own,” she said in an email.
Lutz said she stayed the night in a holding cell among a group of male and female inmates. There was no place to sleep.
She said she was released at 6:30 a.m., caught an Uber home and called one of the friends who had been with her the night before. The friend, according to Lutz, shared an exchange she had with the male officer after Lutz had been led away.
“You know she’s a doctor, right?” the friend had said, according to Lutz.
The officer responded: “She’s a doctor?”
A public records search failed to find any details of Lutz’s arrest, indicating that the charges may have been expunged. Brown, Lutz’s attorney, says she doesn’t know if the $100 bill ever got tested.
Lutz says she’s still receiving therapy for what she experienced. Meanwhile, the ritual with her mother that has gone on throughout Lutz’s adult life, has come to an end.
“I no longer accept cash,” the doctor says.
This story was originally published March 10, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
