Prank Call to Mcdonald S in Kentucky

Prank Call To McDonald’s in Kentucky

A prank call was made to a McDonald's restaurant in Mount Washington, Kentucky on April 9, 2004. According to assistant manager Donna Summers, the caller identified himself as a policeman, 'Officer Scott', and he described an employee whom he said was suspected of stealing a customer's purse. Summers then called 18-year-old employee Louise Ogborn (she fit the description given by Officer Scott) to her office and told her of the suspicion.

Following the instructions of the caller, Summers ordered Ogborn first to empty her pockets, and finally to remove all her clothing except for an apron, in an effort to find the stolen items. Again following the caller's instructions, Summers had another employee watch Ogborn when she had to leave the office to check the restaurant. The other employee, 27 year old Jason Bradley, whom she asked to stay there refused to do so after he was on the phone with the caller, so she phoned her fiancé Walter Nix, asking him to come in to 'help' with the situation.

According to Ogborn, after Summers passed the phone to Nix, he continued to do as the caller said, even as the caller's requests became progressively more bizarre. A security camera recorded Nix forcing Ogborn to remove her apron, the only article of clothing she was still wearing, and to assume degrading positions. Nix eventually struck Ogborn several times and assaulted her … at the instruction of the “police officer” on the telephone. The tape showed that Summers re-entered the office several times and dismissed Ogborn's pleas for help, a statement which Summers denies.

When another employee was asked to take part and objected, Summers decided to call the store manager, whom Officer Scott claimed to have on another phone line. She then discovered that the store manager had not spoken to any police officers, and that the call had been a hoax. A quick-thinking employee dialed *69 to determine that the caller had called from a supermarketpay phone in Panama City, Florida. Summers then called police, who arrested Nix and began an investigation to find the caller.

Investigation and aftermath

Mt.Washington police quickly realized that this was only the latest in a long line of similar incidents. They contacted police in Panama City, who used the serial number of the calling card used to make the call, and Wal-Mart's records of the store, register, and time of the purchase of that card, to find surveillance camera video of the transaction. The buyer in the video was wearing a correctional officer's uniform, and queries to the correctional department led to the identification of the buyer as David Stewart. After his arrest, Stewart was extradited to Kentucky to face charges of impersonating a police officer, and sexual assault.

During his interrogation, Stewart insisted he'd never bought a calling card, but detectives found one in his house that had been used to call nine restaurants in the past year, including a Burger King in Idaho Falls, on the day its manager was reportedly duped. Police also found dozens of applications for police department jobs, hundreds of police magazines, police-type uniforms, guns and holsters, indicating that being or becoming a police officer was possibly a fantasy of the suspect. Nevertheless, a jury found Stewart not guilty.

Nix pleaded guilty to sexual abuse and other crimes in February 2006 and received 5 years in prison; Summers entered a plea to a charge of unlawful imprisonment, a misdemeanor, and received probation.

The victim, Louise Ogborn, sued McDonald's for $200 million for failing to protect her during her ordeal. The civil trial began September 10, 2007 and ended October 5, 2007 when a jury awarded Ogborn $5 million in punitive damages and $1.1 million in compensatory damages and expenses. The jury decided that McDonald's was 50 percent at fault for Ogborn's ordeal. Summers,who had joined the suit and asked for $50 million, was awarded $1.1 million.

Questions about the scam

Many people who hear of these incidents wonder how someone could convince a victim to do these acts. In the ABC News report on the Kentucky incident, psychologist Jeff Gardere said that the caller probably enjoyed manipulating people into doing whatever he wanted, no matter how outlandish. He also notes that the caller was careful to select fast-food restaurants, which tend to have a "by the book" management style, because such an approach makes management less likely to know how to handle novel situations such as those the caller created.

Question: What would YOU do if you were the employee and received a phone call from a police officer instructing you to apprehend someone suspected of stealing?