Comment by Beldin
6 years ago
Well, if the restaurant reimburses the customer after, it probably would become a problem.
Way around this: private owner places his own orders as customer, pockets profits as owner. That might be legitimate - but remember: if you take legal advice from the Internet, you get what you paid for.
Why does it matter if the owner is reimbursing their non-owning customers? Restaurants do that all the time.
(IANAL) My gut says coordination would be be evidence of both (a) premeditated intent & (b) knowledge that actions constituted fraud.
One could place a personal order (or 100) innocently.
One looks substantially less innocent when coordinating with a third party to place orders and transfer money around.
While that speaks to the severity of the crime (if one were proven), as you noted, it doesn't in any way impact whether that behavior is a crime at all.
But who's defrauding who? If the doordash website says I can buy a dough pizza for $19, then doordash has to get me a dough pizza for $19 when I buy one. No fraud is happening, doordash is fulfilling the requirements of the contract they make with all their customers.
If anything, the one who's committing fraud is doordash, because they're putting in "takeout" orders with the restaurant and presenting them as "delivery" orders to the customer.
3 replies →