ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – The video has been viewed and shared on Instagram hundreds of thousands of times.
It shows two adults and five children sitting at a table at the restaurant ‘@ The Diner’ last Sunday. At the end of the video, they leave.
What the video does not show is the adults paying the bill. That’s because the owners of the restaurant say there was no payment -- just a dine and dash.
“They never asked for the check,” Anthony, co-owner of @ The Diner, told News 6 Wednesday. “They never got the check. The server was making drinks for another table.”
Anthony and his mom, Diane, sat down with News 6 at their Universal Boulevard location -- the same location where they say the people in question bailed on the bill.
“They came in with the intention of eating and not paying,” Diane argued.
After the group left Sunday and employees had realized what happened, Diane said she got the phone number that the adults had left with the hostess stand.
“We immediately start texting and calling,” Diane recalled. ‘Ignore, ignore, ignore,’ until finally I said to them, ‘I’m reporting them to the police and we’re gonna post this.’ Then, we got a reaction, but the reaction was gloating, ‘I don’t care, you’ll just make me more famous.’"
After days of obfuscation and deflection from the alleged dine and dashers, Diane and Anthony called the Orange County Sheriff’s Office and filed a report.
The report has a breakdown of the alleged stolen goods and services, and characterizes the adults in question as “persons of interest.”
Diane and Anthony told News 6 that they would not proceed with pressing charges if the two people paid the bill and issued a public apology.
“We want accountability,” Anthony said. “You didn’t just do this, but you did it with kids, too, so we want accountability.”
Shortly after our conversation on camera, Anthony told News 6 that the man in question called and agreed to pay the check.
Around the same time that we confirmed the payment was processed, News 6 was able to get in touch with the man listed as a person of interest in the report.
Over the phone, News 6 tried to ask him questions about the incident, but he insisted that the conversation be conducted over Zoom, where he said he wanted to issue a public apology.
After about 20 minutes of waiting, it appeared that he bailed on the Zoom.