Photo by cstein96A former employee of the Cheesecake Factory on Wisconsin Ave. has been charged with facilitating a fraud ring that led to $117,000 worth of bogus charges on the credit cards of diners, Freeman Klopott reports in the Sunday Examiner.
Nicole Ward was arrested and charged with bank fraud last week after two of her fellow servers told prosecutors that Ward had recruited them to be a part of a credit card skimming scheme that spanned from June 2008 to May 2009.
The Secret Service began an investigation into the Cheesecake Factory scheme in April 2009 after a Citibank investigator informed authorities that he had traced a number of fraud complaints back to the Cheesecake Factory on Wisconsin Avenue, court documents said. Before processing a diner’s credit card, a server must enter his or her “server number.” Agents used that information to trace the stolen credit card numbers back to two servers, who quickly informed authorities that the “skimming” devices they used to steal the numbers had come from Ward.
In November, investigators met with Ward who reportedly said she had been recruited into the scheme by a man named “Slim” and another named “G.” They paid her $40 for each credit card and over the life of the scheme she earned about $5,000, court documents said. One server reportedly told authorities that Ward paid her $25 for each number.
There’s plenty of easy jokes to be made here about how the Cheesecake Factory probably ought to be avoided anyway, but it is by no means the only restaurant that has fallen victim to such schemes in recent years. Last year, servers at M&S Grill, 701 Restaurant, and Clyde’s of Gallery Place were arrested on similar charges.
