Police Squash Restaurant Credit Card Scam

DULUTH, GA -- Gwinnett County Police detectives have ended a credit card scamming operation that had been going on for months, involving two people at a Duluth restaurant.

Tiffany Webb, 23, was arrested for operating the scam at the Studio Movie Grill at 3850 Venture Dr. in Duluth. According to a press release, she described the scam she ran while working as a server at the restaurant.

Here's how the scam worked. Webb would take credit cards from customers to pay for their meal and use an additional card scanner to store the data. She then provided customers' credit card information to an accomplice, Ricardo Montanez Blalock, 26, at the end of her shift. Blalock paid her $1,000 cash weekly in exchange for the credit card information. The press release says this had been going on since May.

Blalock has not been arrested. He is being charged with eight counts of financial identify fraud. Webb was charged with the same, in addition to possession of tools for the commission of a crime.

Eight victims have reported the crime to Gwinnett County police. Managers of the Studio Movie Grill told police, though, that Webb and Blalock had access to hundreds of cards, meaning lots of personal information may be at risk.

Police are urging anybody who visited the Studio Movie Grill in the past three months to contact their bank and have them issue a new account number and ATM card number.

Article images provided by Gwinnett County Police Department