Secret Service: Restaurant waiters key players in area credit card scam
By: Freeman Klopott
March 29, 2009
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| Six servers at several Washington-aera high-end restaurants stand accused of stealing credit card numbers from customers and running up a $750K tab at stores like Gucci. (Matthew A. Roth/For The Examiner) |
Waitstaff at several Washington-area high-end restaurants stole credit card numbers from customers and ran up a $750,000 tab at stores like Gucci and Barney’s of New York, federal authorities said in court documents.
Six servers have been implicated by the Secret Service in the operation, which comes as some investigators are concerned the recession will stretch law enforcement budgets, providing credit card fraudsters with the space they need to operate.
“Credit card crime is almost seen as a victimless crime,” said John Cutler, president of the private financial fraud investigative firm Beau Dietl and Associates, adding that insurance companies typically pay for fraudulent charges. “As police department budgets drop, it’s likely investigators will get pulled away from credit fraud and put on more violent crimes.”
The customers victimized at the District’s M&S Grill, 701 Restaurant, Clyde’s of Gallery Place and Bowie’s Carrabba’s Italian Restaurant, as well as National Harbor’s main hotel and Gaylord National Hotel, are not alone. Similar scams have cropped up nationwide.
In New Orleans, a waitress at Bubba Gump Shrimp Seafood Co. was charged last week with selling up to 50 customers’ credit card information, The Times-Picayune reported. The waitress sold the numbers for $220 apiece to two men who provided her with a machine used to scan the credit cards. In January, a Buffalo, N.Y., man was convicted of hiring several cashiers at local restaurants and a department store to steal customers’ credit card information, the Buffalo News reported.
Secret Service investigators cracked the Washington-area scheme after customers began complaining to their banks of unauthorized charges on their cards, Secret Service Special Agent Philip Soto wrote in a sworn statement filed in Alexandria’s federal court. Soto discovered patterns in the charges that led him to the restaurants, where managers helped him trace the stolen information back to specific servers.
“Every employee has a unique number they put into the register before ringing up a charge,” Clyde’s of Gallery Place manager Paul Walker told The Examiner. “With that system in place, we can point back to an employee very quickly. ... It’s very traceable.”
At the other restaurants, Soto wrote, similar systems were in place that helped investigators trace the stolen information back to the six waiters and waitresses. Management at M&S Grill and Gaylord said they were cooperating with investigators and declined further comment. The other restaurants declined to comment.
Three men who allegedly bought the numbers from the servers — Joseph Artemus Bush, Aarron D. Gilbert and Erick V. Burton — used the information to create counterfeit credit cards that were used at area stores, Soto wrote. The men were caught on tape using the bogus cards to either buy items at stores like Target or gift cards at CVS that they later spent at Barney’s and Gucci in Chevy Chase.
Secret Service spokesman Darrin Blackford declined to comment on the investigation, but said he wasn’t aware of agents uncovering financial fraud that was directly “attributable to the economy.”
Cutler, however, said, “We’re only beginning to see the economic pain of the financial crisis. ... The cutbacks are just starting now.
“Municipalities will try not to cut back law enforcement, but there’s only so much in the balloon,” he said. “At some point it will have to pop.”
fklopott@dcexaminer.com
AT A GLANCE:
» Since its establishment in 1865, the Secret Service’s mission has extended from protecting the president to investigating counterfeiting of U.S. currency and other financial crimes.
» In 1984, the agency’s responsibilities expanded to include crime that involves financial institution fraud, telecommunications fraud, false identification documents and credit card fraud.
The servers who have been charged are:
Jamaal Snowden: Clyde’s
Lavelle Denise Payne: 701 Restaurant
Shannon Eileen McLaughlin: M&S Grill
Simone Carrie Diane Folk: M&S Grill
Information: secretservice.gov
