A waitress who pleaded guilty to stealing customers’ credit card information is now working at Harry’s Tap Room in Arlington and training other servers for the job, according to court records.
Lavelle Denise Payne, 41, pleaded guilty to stealing the credit card numbers from 701 Restaurant customers. She was fired by 701 after her March arrest and was hired by Harry’s Tap Room at 2800 Clarendon Blvd. on April 23, according to a letter sent to a federal judge from Harry’s general manger, John Cosgrove.
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Payne was one of several servers at Washington-area high-end restaurants who stole credit card numbers from customers and sold them to the scheme’s three ringleaders for $20 each. The ringleaders then used the stolen cards to run up a $750,000 tab at stores like Barneys New York and Gucci.
Before working at 701, Payne was a server at M&S Grill, the center point for much of the thievery, court documents filed in Alexandria’s federal court show. While at M&S she met Simone Folk, who later recruited Payne to join the scheme.
After being arrested and losing her job, Folk was hired as a cashier at Cosi in Arlington. On Friday, Folk was sentenced to one year in prison. Payne is scheduled to be sentenced Friday.
Cosgrove has promoted Payne, putting her in charge of training other servers, court documents said.
“[Payne’s] work so far has been invaluable,” Cosgrove wrote. “Not only is Lavelle a patient teacher, but she also leads by example.” Cosgrove did not return calls for comment.
When Folk approached Payne to join the scheme in August, Payne was struggling with being a new single mom, she wrote in a letter to the judge. The father of her son — now 4 — had recently left her, and she was “tired [of] making three dollars over on paychecks to qualify me for food stamps,” she wrote.
“I took [an] easy way out to survive. At the time it was a good reason and I hated myself every time I swiped someone’s card,” she wrote. Payne threw the credit card skimming device into a creek two months before her arrest.
Payne faces up to 18 months in prison and a $70,000 fine.
