Two M&S Grill waitresses are expected to plead guilty today to their roles in a credit card skimming scheme that ran up a $750,000 tab on cards stolen from diners at Washington-area high-end restaurants, their attorneys confirmed to The Examiner.
The two waitresses are accused of stealing credit card numbers and selling them to the scheme’s three ringleaders. According to court documents filed in Alexandria’s federal court, the ringleaders used the numbers provided by the two waitresses to spend $150,000 at stores like Gucci and Barney’s of New York.
One of the ringleaders, Aaron Gilbert, pleaded guilty late last month. He faces up to 10 and-a-half years in prison and a $500,000 fine.
When Gilbert was arrested March 25, he had seven credit cards with him. Each of the cards had his name on it and a re-encoded magnetic strip linking the card to someone else’s account. Gilbert admitted to paying the restaurant servers for the credit card numbers.
Simone Carrie Diane Folk, who is accused of stealing card numbers from M&S diners between January 2008 and March 2009, received about $20 for each number she provided to the ringleaders, her attorney Alan Yamamoto said. Gilbert and others then ran up a $130,000 bill using the cards provided by Folk in more than 300 transactions, court records said.
“[Folk] was at the very bottom of this and got very little out of it,” Yamamoto said.
Attorney Mark Bodner also confirmed that his client, Vasha Monique Carter, is expected to plead guilty today but declined to comment further.
Carter worked at M&S Grill between January 2008 and July 2008, court documents said. The numbers she’s accused of stealing were used in more than 70 transactions for a total of $20,000.
The Secret Service started investigating the scheme after diners began reporting fraudulent charges on their credit cards to their banks, which then contacted law enforcement, court records show. M&S servers were linked to the stolen numbers because each server must slide an employee card through the register before charging a diner’s credit card.
Cases against servers at the District’s 701 Restaurant, Clyde’s of Gallery Place and Bowie’s Carrabba’s Italian Restaurant are still pending.
