Ocean City Restaurant Robbed by Employee Who Had “An App for That”!
OCEAN CITY, MD. — (February 8, 2015) – In the old days, employees at various bars and restaurants would simply slip money out of the till when no one was looking.
Then business owners wised up and put in cameras to catch thieves in the act of pilfering bucks out of the cash register or stealing product and taking it out the back door and hiding it with the trash to retrieve later.
Now, police say that a simple app on a smart phone designed to accept credit card payments from customers was used to scam over two thousand bucks from an Ocean City restaurant.
In August, Ocean City Police Criminal Investigation Division detectives began investigating a theft scheme after an area restaurant reported fraudulent transactions to a financial account.
Through investigation, detectives learned that a spouse of an employee at the restaurant, later identified as Donna M. Prouty, 57, of Salisbury, MD, accessed a mobile app that the employee had on his mobile phone that was used to accept payments from customers. Prouty used this app to transfer over $2,500 in credits from the restaurant’s financial account into her personal accounts.
A warrant was issued for Prouty’s arrest in November, and she was arrested on February 5, 2015 after turning herself into police at the Ocean City Public Safety Building. Detectives have charged Prouty with theft ($1,000-$10,000), theft scheme ($1,000-$10,000), and multiple counts of unauthorized use of another’s credit card. Prouty was seen by a Maryland District Court Commissioner and was released on personal recognizance.