Scammers target valley restaurants

Fresh Juice Bar employees said a scammer has been targeting their stores across the desert. Manager Katlyn Border said a man who claims he’s deaf communicates on his iPad to employees that he suffered an allergic reaction and was hospitalized from something in his drink order. The man visited two of the Palm Springs locations with the same complaint and asked for a cash refund.

Employees caught on after he approached the third Fresh location with the same story, that’s after they gave him about $40.

“He came to our third location in Palm Desert. As soon as we let him know that we had known what was going on, he said ‘I wasn’t coming in to tell that. How dare you accuse me of something I’ve never done. I’ve never been to your other locations.’ We pretty much knew it was a scam after the third location,” said Border.

Mindy Reed, owner of Zin American Bistro and Alicante in Palm Springs, said there’s another scam to be aware of. A man named Jack Sardinias, with a Hollywood, Florida, mailing address mailed complaint letters to both of her restaurants.

“He said he came into the restaurant and had a meal here, something got spilled on his wife’s jacket,” said Reed.

The letters included a photo of the stained jacket and a dry cleaning bill of $46.38.

“He wrote it in a way that it was so passively aggressively nice. I was actually considering writing a check.”

However, there were some red flags.

“No phone number, no contact information, just a mailing address,” she said.

Reed didn’t pay up and instead took to Facebook to share the letter. She wasn’t alone. Other restaurant owners came forward saying they were targeted by the same scammer.

“All of the same receipts, the same exact picture of the jacket, they just changed what they ate and where they were,” said Reed.

If you see or receive anything suspicious you think could be a scam, contact police.