Bizarre Hoaxes On Restaurants Trigger Lawsuits
By STEVEN GRAY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
March 30, 2004; Page B1
(See Corrections & Amplifications item below.)
The restaurant industry is struggling to get in front of a bizarre hoax in which outlet managers across the country have been duped into strip-searching employees or customers.
Last week, a man allegedly claiming to be a police officer called a Fountain Hills, Ariz., Taco Bell and told the manager to conduct a strip search of a female he said had stolen a pocket book, and gave a general description of what she was wearing. Pulling aside a 17-year-old female customer who roughly fit the description, the boss complied. As in the other cases, no stolen property was found, though this is the first search involving a customer rather than an employee.
It might seem implausible that any manager could be compelled by an unknown caller to order someone to entirely disrobe and submit to a humiliating search for drugs or stolen money. Or that someone would succumb to such an examination. But investigators say there have been dozens of similar cases since 1999, involving Burger King, Wendy's, Applebee's and others. Similar incidents have been reported in Massachusetts, South Dakota, Indiana, Utah and Ohio. The managers and the victims of such incidents have been male and female. Investigators have begun linking the cases and say they believe the hoaxes are the work of a single person calling from North Florida public telephones using a phone card.
His likely motive, they say: Not money, but power and perversion.
In the Arizona case, the caller allegedly posing as a police officer remained on the phone to instruct the manager for each step of the examination of his young customer, which included a demoralizing cavity search, says Sheriff Joseph Arpaio of Marciopa County.
Discussing the March 22 hoax at the Phoenix suburb, the sheriff said he was surprised the manager believed the phony policeman when he insisted that the girl would go to jail if she didn't submit to the search. "For any cop to call a private citizen and ask them to do a search is wrong and beyond my imagination," he said. The sheriff says he has sent letters to corporate headquarters of Taco Bell, Wendy's, McDonald's, Hooters, Applebee's and Ruby Tuesday urging them to warn restaurant managers of the fake calls.
These cases raise enormous, complex liability issues: Last summer, an Odessa, Texas, Burger King franchise paid ,000 to settle a civil suit filed by an employee who alleged she was forced to submit to a strip search by a male manager who received a similar phone call. The restaurant's manager was arrested and charged with "illegal restraint," and fined 0.
And last week, Wendy's International Inc. said it had been hit with four lawsuits by former workers of Boston-area company-owned outlets. In February, managers there, acting on a call from a man posing as a police officer, ordered the workers to submit to a strip search for allegedly stolen money.
Although these cases have been popping up for nearly five years, they are beginning to gain the attention of the National Food Service Security Council, a 25-year-old group of restaurant-industry security executives. Industry insiders say the restaurant chains hesitated to talk about the hoaxes because it was so embarrassing to the outlets that were involved. Tom Briggs, a council spokesman, said the idea of managers falling for the hoax points to a serious training flaw. "Whoever this caller is must be a hell of a good con man," Mr. Briggs says. "You'd think nobody would fall for this."
The National Restaurant Association, Wendy's, Taco Bell and Applebee's are sending memos to restaurants telling managers that if they receive suspicious calls, to ask for the caller's name and telephone number, then hang up and contact local law-enforcement authorities.
"We're directing them not to take any action," says Laurie Schalow, a spokeswoman for Taco Bell, a subsidiary of Yum! Brands Inc., Louisville, Ky.
Since last month's incidents, Wendy's has sent letters making clear to restaurant managers that "searches of employees must be visual and not physical. And physical means under no circumstances will an employee be asked to removed articles of clothing that covers the torso, except for outer coats, shoes or a hat," says Bob Bertini, a Wendy's spokesman.
Experts in employee-rights law and retail loss prevention say that courts have upheld companies' rights to search lockers and e-mail, for instance, so long as employees are told of the company's right to search its property. Still, most experts agree that strip-searching is an invasion of privacy, and that most companies move conservatively on tips about possible thefts, probing for sufficient evidence before accusing an employee.
Retailers, in general, have good reason to be on guard for internal theft: Stores lose about .5 billion annually to inventory shrinkage, about 48% of that from employee theft, according to the University of Florida's Security Research Project.
Restaurants are cash-intensive businesses, and thus prime targets for theft of items such as food, as well as robberies, burglaries and theft of cash by employees. Still, experts say internal theft is preventable, if only by using more rigorous measures of screening prospective employees.
Fast-food outlets are particularly vulnerable to being duped this way, says Kevin Tate, senior manager of retail work-force solutions at Unicru Inc., a Portland, Ore., firm that advises companies on loss-prevention issues. And a teenage supervisor of a fast-food store could lack the maturity and professional experience to deal effectively with such complex legal issues, he says.
"They don't have anywhere near the experience that a 30-year vice president of loss prevention has," Mr. Tate says, suggesting that companies beef up their management guidebooks to include tips from senior security executives.
Write to Steven Gray at
[email protected]
Corrections & Amplifications:
Joseph Arpaio is sheriff of Maricopa County in Arizona. The name of the county was incorrectly given as Marciopa in the article above.
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