Three former servers from Lantana's Old Key Lime House charged in fraud scam

Source: The Palm Beach Post, Fla.儲存Aug. 21--LANTANA -- Three former servers at Lantana's historic Old Key Lime House restaurant have been arrested after they and others allegedly defrauded the business out of more than $93,000, police said.Police arrested Michel Flores, 36, of Boynton Beach, Monday on allegations of grand theft and organized fraud. Last week, police arrested Timothy James Smith, 36, and Ross David Molineaux, 33, both of Boynton Beach, on similar allegations.More arrests could be coming as police alleged that eight servers were involved.Police began investigating the fraud allegations in July 2012 after restaurant managers reported that they had discovered a scam being done by certain servers, according to a probable cause arrest affidavit. The servers were fired around that same time.The alleged fraud lasted for about a year and cost the restaurant $93,236.50, police saidPolice spoke to a former employee, who explained how the scam worked.If a customer paid a bill with cash, the server would remove certain food and drink items from the bill before closing out the order. The server would transfer those items to another table and then pocket the money that was already paid.The next table that ordered those items would pay for them and the scam would start all over again, according to the arrest report. The servers would transfer items that would be easily accessible such as sodas, beer, soups and pies, police said.Restaurant 新蒲崗迷你倉wner Ryan Cordero said the ploy is a commonly known scheme and was discovered when his managers noticed an unusually high number of table transfers."We we just doing some reports in our computer system about certain activities as far as where everything was going, and we noticed an exorbitant amount of transfers," he said. "We started digging into it and, lo and behold, we discovered, it's actually called a wagon-wheel scheme."The restaurant hired a computer forensics team to help determine who was involved, he said. Cordero said he fully intends to cooperate with authorities in prosecuting the former employees."I think it's despicable," he said.The restaurant has installed a new computer system with new safeguards and will have a forensics team review the system every two to three months, he saidThe former employee told police that Smith approached her and trained her on how to run the scam and make extra money, the affidavit said. The restaurant's owners decided not to prosecute that woman because she played only a small role in the scam, the affidavit saidCordero said it's common for servers to transfer customers to another table once a day. However, some of the servers suspected in the scheme had more than 100 transfers in a single day, police said.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 The Palm Beach Post (West Palm Beach, Fla.) Visit The Palm Beach Post (West Palm Beach, Fla.) at .palmbeachpost.com Distributed by MCT Information Servicesmini storage