A recent guest at a hotel in Times Square says she received a $500 smoking fee, but she doesn’t smoke, and she wasn’t in the room at the time smoke was allegedly detected in her room.

North Carolina resident Rhaiany Leicy was visiting New York City with a friend from Friday, Oct. 3 to Sunday, Oct. 5. She tells PEOPLE the group decided to book a room at the M Social Hotel in Times Square, based on its prime location and good reviews on Booking.com.

“It seemed like a space where people came to hang out and just enjoy the city, and that’s what we were trying to do,” Leicy tells PEOPLE.

On Saturday morning, the friends left their hotel room around 11 a.m. to enjoy an afternoon in the city. Around 5 p.m., the friends made it back to their suite and found an envelope taped to their door.

“Upon opening it, I saw that they were going to charge me $500 for smoking in the room,” Leicy says. “So I immediately took that down to the front desk and asked to speak to the manager.”

After speaking with Leicy, a hotel manager went to the office and brought back a sheet of paper labeled “Smoke Report.” The sheet showed a graph allegedly detecting smoke within her room between 4 and 4:30 p.m. — a time the women were outside of the hotel.

According to the report, the “smoke detection technology used” by the hotel collects measurements that are “passed to a proprietary algorithm that has been verified by rigorous testing.” It is designed to test for vaporized tobacco, marijuana, nicotine products, and e-cigarette devices.

Leicy told the manager there was no way this was possible, as no one in her group of friends smoked, and they were all gone at the time of the report. The guest even showed photos with time stamps proving their location. After asking for security camera footage and key card logs to determine if anyone entered their room, Leicy claims the manager said there was nothing he could do.

After the incident on Saturday, Leicy tried to email the hotel about the charge. Eventually, she received a message that contained a new smoke report. She claims the hotel said there was a mistake, stating that the smoke was detected between 9:15 and 10:15 a.m. instead.

Amid the smoke allegation, Leicy did some additional research on the hotel and found that other guests had been through a similar situation.

“AVOID THIS HOTEL – $500 BOGUS SMOKING FEE SCAM!,” wrote one Google reviewer.

“We stayed at M Social Times Square and were accused of smoking in our hotel room — something we absolutely did not do, as none of us smoke at all,” wrote another. “Despite this, we were charged a $500 fee without any evidence or chance to explain ourselves.”

This encouraged Leicy to speak out and share her story on TikTok. The video, which has amassed more than 3 million views, sparked others to share what Leicy called a “recurring complaint.”

Without any additional communication from the hotel, Leicy received a checkout bill on Tuesday, Oct. 7, that had the smoking fee removed — something she believes was only because of social media.

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“I can’t speculate,” Leicy says about the true story behind the charges. “It feels very shady.”

“There’s no way of necessarily preventing this from happening, and if you’re not doing anything wrong, you shouldn’t go through this experience,” Leicy says to other travelers. “I guess, just try to always have proof of where you were, because that’s saved me in this situation.”

The M Social Hotel in Times Square and its parent company, Millennium Hotels, did not immediately reply to PEOPLE’s request for comment.