We love coming to the Full Moon Market in Durham and meeting you all. Thanks so much for your welcome!

But we were really sad to find last week that we’d been given counterfeit £50 notes, pretty much wiping out our takings that night. We know it happens sometimes… doesn’t make it feel any better.

Mouyhedin doesn’t let something like this get him down but we were all really touched by the outpouring of support after we posted this on Facebook last week. People saying they’d come specially for a falafel to be supportive, and sending us their good wishes, as well as kind comments all day long on the stall in Darlington. We love you!!❤️

I don’t care about what happened but the good thing about it that made me see all my friends here provide support Thank you very much my lovely people❤️🌹😘
I am now grateful to those idiots who have tricked me😂😁🤣 because of them I see all this support from my friends😍

For any fellow stallholders or shop owners reading this and you’re about to head out, it might just save you some lost profits and time to refresh your memory on how to tell if you’re being scammed.

Here’s the Bank of England’s official advice page that tells you how to identify genuine banknotes. The bigger denominations are probably most likely to be forgeries. The key thing with a £50 apart from the watermark of the queen’s face, is the ‘motion thread’.
It’s the coloured strip woven into the paper which has five dashes along the note. They contain images of the £ symbol and the number 50.

When you tilt the note from side to side, the images move up and down. When you tilt the note up and down, the images move from side to side and the number 50 and the £ symbol switch. The video below shows what it looks like.

We hope this helps someone – be careful out there.