Dirty jacket scam targets restaurants

It seemed odd that someone would be wearing a suede jacket during the hottest week so far this year.

At least that’s what bar and restaurant owner Terry Best thought when a well-dressed man in his mid-40s came into O’Doherty’s in the Valley last week and asked the restaurant to cover the costs of cleaning his wife’s suede leather jacket, which the man alleged a server had dirtied with a spilled drink the week before.

“I kind of got suspicious,” Best said.

When Best pressed for more information, the man seemed ready to continue his story, even if the facts didn’t match up.

“He said the person who spilled it was a tall, dark-haired bartender,” Best said. But the only person who could match that description was not working that night. The man left, saying he’d get back to Best after he talked to his wife. He hasn’t been seen since.

Best called other restaurants in the area and soon discovered that he wasn’t alone.

“He’s going around, telling people that somebody spilled a beer on his wife’s jacket, and he’s trying to get somebody to reimburse the $40 to clean it,” he said.

The man, whom Best described as being about 45 years old, very thin and well dressed with a Southern drawl, seems to present a handwritten receipt from “Simply Suede” cleaners for the jacket cleaning and asks various waiters and bartenders for a refund, Best said.

At the O’Doherty’s in downtown Spokane, the man pulled the same trick, but this time an employee paid the bill without thinking it was a scam, said manager Shannon O’Doherty.

“It’s weird to be ripped off,” he said. “I imagine we are more than we think, but this was brazen. This was strange.”

O’Doherty keeps posted at the bar a copy of the handwritten receipt from Simply Suede, which appears to be a fictional cleaner.

At the Alpine Restaurant, located just west of the Valley O’Doherty’s on Sprague, the same man entered with the same story, this time giving the name of an off-duty bartender as the supposed drink-spiller, Best said.

The man didn’t realize the off-duty worker was actually sitting at the bar when he came in to sell his story, Best said.

“He’s done it at one place, and he’s trying at others,” Best said. “He’s legit-looking. He’s a 45-year-old who talks a good story.”