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Con Artist No Match For Lincoln Square Bars: Same Scam Fails At Three Pubs

 The Daily Bar & Grill, the Grafton and Mash were all targeted by the same scammer.
The Daily Bar & Grill, the Grafton and Mash were all targeted by the same scammer.
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Provided; inset photos DNAinfo/Patty Wetli

LINCOLN SQUARE — Note to con artists: If your plan is to scam money out of Lincoln Square businesses, it'll take a whole lot more than a bogus receipt and a cockamamie story about spilled drinks to bamboozle the neighborhood's bar owners.

That's the lesson one swindler learned the hard way as workers at not one, not two, but three establishments failed to fall for his bluff.

On Wednesday, a man walked into the Daily Bar & Grill, the Grafton and Mash — all in the 4500 block of North Lincoln Avenue — with a variation of the same story: He told staff he was interested in booking a private event, then worked into the conversation the claim that a server spilled a drink on his wife several weeks prior and handed over a dry cleaning bill for $65.

"First it was 'I know you,' then 'We'll do a party,' then 'Oh, the receipt,'" recalled Marshall McCarty, manager at Mash.

"I was very off balance, it made me feel uneasy," McCarty said. "I smelled the game afoot."

The man, who McCarty described as "a bit frantic," insisted he'd spoken with McCarty during his alleged previous visit, telling the manager, "My wife thinks you're cute."

"He got on a fake phone call with his 'wife' and tells her, 'I'm talking to that cute bald guy,'" McCarty said.

McCarty told the cheat he wasn't allowed to give out money and said he'd pass along the receipt to Mash's owners.

"The guy said, 'I need it,'" and took back the receipt, McCarty said.

At the time, McCarty didn't think the incident merited calling police. It was Dan Doctor, general manager at the Daily, who pieced together that his bar and the Grafton had also been targeted by the same hustler.

Doctor wanted to "alert as many people as possible" in the event the man tries to rip off other bars in Lincoln Square or elsewhere in the city, he told DNAinfo via email, and provided a photo his staff snapped of the phony receipt.

McCarty said the man was white, wore glasses and a collared shirt, stood 6-foot to 6-foot-2 and weighed about 200 pounds.

Though restaurants get their share of false "there's-a-hair-in-my-food" claims, McCarty said in-person cons as elaborate as the dry cleaning hoaxster's are rare.

"Mostly it's over the phone," he said. "A company asks you to place your paper order, or another one is cleaning chemicals."

In hindsight, McCarty said the grifter was well organized.

"He was certainly an experienced con," McCarty said.

But not experienced enough to fool any of his Lincoln Square marks.

"No one has paid for anything," Doctor said.

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