Dozens of Manhattan’s wealthiest restaurant-goers were stabbed in the back with a steak knife by their very own waiters, who secretly copied their high-limit AmEx cards and gave the info to a fraud ring that spent millions of dollars at upscale retailers, authorities said yesterday.
The 28 suspects include seven waiters from top eateries like Smith & Wollensky, The Capital Grille, Wolfgang’s Steakhouse and JoJo.
Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said his detectives had “never seen better reproduction” of phony cards — which were used by “shoppers” at stores such as Chanel, Neiman Marcus, Cartier, Hermès of Paris, Bergdorf Goodman and Bloomingdale’s.
Ringleaders boasted in a recent phone conversation that “they intended to clear $1 million between October and Christmas of this year,” said Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr.
The accused waiters were particularly interested in the exclusive black AmEx Centurion — an invitation-only card reserved for the wealthiest members that requires a one-year expenditure of $250,000.
They believed those customers were less likely to notice extra big-ticket purchases on their monthly bills, sources said.
“The Black card — that was gold to them,” said a law-enforcement source.
“They’d settle for a Gold or Platinum card. But they’d always take a Black card.”
The servers were allegedly paid by the ring to use handheld “skimmers” to copy data from the cards.
That data was later used to create a duplicate AmEx card in the victim’s name, and the buyers created fake IDs to match.
The purchased goods were often sold to a stable of buyers who knew they were stolen-to-order.
Those “customers” resold the items on the Internet, authorities said.
One of the suspects, Eric Brahms, 44, was arrested at Mount Sinai Hospital, where his wife was going into labor.
At the request of Assistant DA Kenn Kern, all of the defendants were ordered held after arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court until authorities could verify that their bail was not paid with ill-gotten funds.
Among the defendants were the accused ringleader, Lucius Damian Jacas, and Andrew Parker — a Manhattan party boy who had previously been busted for shoplifting luxury items and ID theft.
Additional reporting by Helen Freund and Antonio Antenucci
A raid Wednesday at a Manhattan Mini-Storage used by the ring to warehouse goods recovered more than a million dollars worth of merchandise. (Steven Hirsch)
WATCH THIS! These luxury watches were among the high-priced items that an ID-theft ring trafficked, according to prosecutors. (NY Post: Chad Rachman)