Four diners who left a €447 (around £385) restaurant bill unpaid in Cerceda, Spain, have been convicted and sentenced for fraud, five years after leaving without paying for their meal. The sentence is an eight-month prison term for each of the four, imposed for the offence of fraud.
The incident took place in 2021 at a restaurant in Cerceda, A Coruña. According to the Spanish television programme Aruser@s, presenter Alba Sánchez revealed that the four customers built up a bill of approximately £100 each before fleeing without paying. She recounted: "It happened in 2021 at a restaurant in Cerceda, A Coruña, where four diners showed up and didn't hold back when ordering: octopus, ribeye steaks, Albariño wine, and shots, without a thought for the price."
Owner describes the meal and the escape
Restaurant owner Maria told Alba: "The customers ordered four soft drinks and then proceeded to add various items to the order: bread, a platter of Iberian cured meats, five servings of octopus, two ribeye steaks, two bottles of Albariño wine, two portions of potatoes, and four shots." She added: "They didn't deny anything. They didn't even look at the prices. In fact, I went to the kitchen and told my husband, 'We've just made our day with this table.'"
Upon finishing their meal, two of the group stepped outside for a cigarette while the remaining two stayed inside. They subsequently requested the bill and, according to the court ruling, asked for three coffees to take out onto the terrace. Maria had no suspicions, yet when she headed outside with the coffees, "there was no one left," she recounted to Informativos Telecinco.
Impact on the small business
Maria went on to say: "You feel like you've been played for a fool. It's not so much about the money, though that matters, too, because for a small business like ours, it throws the whole month's finances into disarray, but rather the sense of powerlessness that comes from feeling mocked."
They eventually chose to report what had happened, with the culprits identified through the venue's CCTV footage. The proprietor has welcomed the result and believes that, despite the passage of time, the verdict helps address the initial sense of powerlessness. "I hope this serves as a lesson to them, and to anyone else considering doing the same thing," she said.
Wider trend of dine-and-dash incidents
So-called "dine and dash" incidents appear to have grown more frequent in recent years. In one especially infamous case, a British tourist succeeded in accumulating a €19,000 (£17,000) bill during a six-week residence at a hotel in Santa Ponça, Calvià, Spain and failed to settle the account. In that instance the individual was ultimately apprehended after attempting to check himself into another hotel run by the same group, but unlike Maria's case, most of them tend to go unpunished.
