Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Karma gets a would-be scammer at an Old City bar

A forgetful dine-and-dasher is forced to pay up.

2 comments

Karma gets a would-be scammer at an Old City bar

POSTED: Monday, August 27, 2012, 9:50 AM
Filed Under: TableTalk

You restaurateurs (and law-abiding citizens) will appreciate this story from Old City:

A patron at Bierstube - Mike Naessens' bar at 206 Market St. - kept ducking out to catch smokes. In between, he bought drinks for people around him and ran up a $90 tab eating and drinking.

Naessens says the bartender foolishly did not ask for a credit card because the guy kept leaving his backpack. Sure enough, the guy never returned from his last smoke break.

But he left behind the backpack, and when the bartender opened it, he found inside a Nikon D800 (Amazon retail: $2,999) with what Naessens called a serious telephoto lens.

Naessens locked the camera in the safe. Two days later, the dine-and-dasher returned. Naessens told him to pay the tab or he would call the cops.

"The guy returned about three days later with his daddy and the money," said Naessens. "The guy is close to 40. Pretty pathetic. [He] finally coughs up the money and gets his camera back. The glamorous world of being a restaurant owner - at least karma catches on sometimes."

2 comments
Comments  (2)
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 10:22 AM, 08/27/2012
    Did he leave a tip?
    knicks84
  • 0 like this / 0 don't   •   Posted 12:56 PM, 08/27/2012
    Not much of a "scam," sounds like the restaurateur would have got the better deal.
    BarryG


About this blog
Michael Klein, the editor/producer of philly.com/Food, writes about the local restaurant scene in his Inquirer column "Table Talk." Have a question? Email it! See his Inquirer work here. Reach Michael at mklein@philly.com.

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