A video of a maskless woman went viral after she falsely told a grocery store worker that she could go to prison for telling shoppers to wear masks.
The woman, Lenka Koloma, can be heard saying that she is shopping on behalf of ‘Freedom to Breathe Agency’ and wants to make sure that ‘people’s constitutional rights, civil and federal laws are not broken.’
The incident happened in Orange County when store supervisor Liz Chavez was told two customers were not wearing masks.
Chavez then approached Koloma and the other woman to inform them that they are ‘required to wear a mask.’
In an interview with Buzzfeed News, Chavez recalled: “They told me, ‘No we’re not required to wear a mask.’”
The two women said they were from the ‘Freedom to Breathe Agency’ and showed Chavez a paper stating she could be prosecuted for telling customers to wear face masks.
Koloma can be heard saying: “You personally need to take this to your manager because you personally can be sued for this, OK?”
She added: “You are putting yourself into major legal liability — you personally.”
The paper Koloma showed Chavez states that she could be fined up to $10,000 and go to jail for up to five years for forcing people to wear a mask.
“They weren’t there to shop,” Chavez expressed. “They honestly were probably just waiting for somebody to come up to them and ask them to wear a mask so they could do this.”
The video quickly received over one million views on Twitter and TikTok.
The FTBA is not a real agency and operates only through a Facebook group.
In an interview with BuzzFeed News, Koloma said that she and her friend ‘both have medical, health conditions and also religious beliefs that do not allow us to wear a mask.’
Koloma, who identifies herself as the founder of FTBA, said that Chavez could face legal action for enforcing the face mask policy in the store.
But a health order from California has mandated employees and shoppers to use face masks when around others.
Chavez said to BuzzFeed News that she thinks Koloma just wanted a confrontation. “I just want to say people really need to be nice to these grocery workers, we work our butts off during this pandemic,” she added.
“Just give us a little break, it’s just our store policies, we’re following the rules. We don’t need to be attacked every day.”
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