Expense-A-Steak Receipt Generator Makes Fraud Easy
Midtown Manhattan steakhouse Maloney & Porcelli's tongue-in-cheek "Expense-a-Steak" tool generates remarkably realistic-looking expense friendly receipts for whatever amount you enter into the website (supposedly the cash you dropped on their fine hunks of meat.) Is it aiding and abetting fraud? Who knows.
From the WSJ:
The Web site is just a week old but already has some 88,000 receipt downloads, according to Deacon Webster, chief creative officer at Walrus, the New York-based agency behind the campaign.
He added that the receipts, while remarkably authentic, are not intended to be passed off as the real thing. "If somebody's letting a receipt for $3,000 worth of cyan toner through their department, then we're the last people who'll get in trouble."
The WSJ also says that the restaurant, located near the offices of American Express, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, has replaced their bags with fake ones from cheaper restaurants so the free-spending bankers won't get caught with fancy food.
The restaurants, which were not mentioned by name in the article, have sent cease-and-desist orders.
[Expense-A-Steak]
Can ‘Expense-a-Steak' Save the Restaurant Industry? [WSJ]
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Comments:
Fake ones from cheap restaurants? Are they exact replicas or mistyped knockoffs (i.e. T.G.I.Fridays vs. T.G.Fridays)? I could understand the former, but I don't know why they would have to cease on the latter.
As an alternative, couldn't they solicit used bags and simply reuse them after cleaning them, maybe even let people bring their own? That way they would be helping the environment at the same time.
Only in New York.
I wonder if Maloney & Porcelli's would mind if someboday pays with a remarkably realistic-looking expense friendly fake credit card?
I'll bet the PR types LOVE that thing too!
@PsiCop: People talk like this all the time. It's because we attach emotional meanings to words that have no such thing. For example, it can be said that Charles Manson was quite brilliant in his tactics to coerce impressionable people to do his work for him while he made sure to never kill anyone himself. What he did was evil and criminal, yes, but to describe the ability he had to do such a thing as brilliant is not incorrect. It is merely stating that someone has an exceptional ability to do something. No one ever said that thing had to be beneficial to humanity.
"Brilliant" means smart or full of excellence but it's just a word with a meaning. It is a measure of ability without emotional connotation, like an assumption that only good people can be brilliant.
Dead link! Database error. :(
As someone who handled receipts for "department/company cards" at a previous jobs, you may be able to duplicate the look, but unless you have a thermal paper and/or dot matrix printer that will handle receipt paper, no Admin worth their salt would send in something with an obvious fake receipt. And trust me, the accounting dept at most companies didn't get there by being dumb and not observant.
Hell, I remember having to fill out 2-3 forms because someone lost a $15 parking lot receipt. Which was of course found later in that persons wallet.
When I worked as a bartender, I had a couple of guys ask me to make their receipt show more than they paid, and they'd kick back half the overage.
Can't remember how I was supposed to do that and not make my register be off that same amount.
@PsiCop: And Bob Garfield is more than just an ad guy. He's a well known media critic and co-host of NPR's On The Media.
I'm trying it now, but it's been running for like three minutes. Maybe they have too much traffic.
Anyway, I would think it may raise an eyebrow or two if I supposedly paid cash for something like this. It is expected in most companies that if you have that type of expense account, you put it on the company credit card.
Wow, I know how to do it and I worked in retail for about a week--you fix it after you print the receipt. Not that I would do it, but still, there are ways.
@GitEmSteveDave_IsWaving: Many companies (like my own) have moved to scanned receipts instead of paper. It would seem that would make them easier to fake.
@treimel:
If it's a newer type of register your voids and refunds are tracked, and the transaction will be flagged for human review.
Coming this January to CBS Dragnet: Accounting
I was working the the afternoon shift out of accounts payable when the call came in, a 3-19, bogus receipt.
@Corporate_guy: Not having to produce new paper bags. You do understand that it costs energy and resources to make paper bags, right?
100 beers for their group? Damn, meant to put in 10! Don't worry, I fixed it once the customer noticed. They still tipped well so I think they're still happy.
These things aren't hard to explain away if you use some common sense with your errors.
@FatLynn:
Plus, it only works if you either live in NYC or just got back from a business trip. I do wonder how many people have successfully used this to scam their employer rather than just as a novelty...
@PsiCop: What Missus Pi said +
This was clearly meant as a joke and not intended to aid in actual fraud. Using this website to defraud the company you work for would be illegal. Creating the website in the first place because you think it's funny and it will draw customers to your web presence is certainly not illegal and in my mind is absolutely brilliant.
@pecan 3.14159265: Perhaps calling it "brilliant" would have been just a neutral assessment. But Garfield didn't stop there. He ALSO said "We love this thing!" which — oddly enough — looks to me as though it's "approval."
I dunno, maybe I'm crazy, but I tend to think the words people choose to use to describe things, tells me what they think about them. "Love" is a pretty clear term of affection, not of neutrality. Then again, maybe I'm crazy, and "love" doesn't mean what it seems to. <shrugs>
@pecan 3.14159265: Yes, but you skipped over the part where the ad guy said, "We LOVE this thing."
Using the word "brilliant" wasn't the crime.
@bornonbord: What you say is true: What you say is true.
Pecan earned her ♥ because of her name, and kept it because of the insightful comments.
@DreamTheEndless: Death's little brother: You can think what you want, but I can't imagine any possible reason for this website to exist other than to provide fake receipts to defraud your company.
The fact that you can download the fake receipts should be all the evidence you need that it's not meant as a joke. Why would you possibly want to download one unless you were trying to defraud? How is showing a coworker a fake receipt you printed out funny?
@GitEmSteveDave_IsWaving: I've had no problems submitting copies of receipts in the past.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that you can use copies of receipts with taxes.
@shepd:
@treimel:
Retail systems and restaurant systems are very different. I can't just put in a steak without that steak being thrown on the grill in the kitchen.
Also, credits required a managers approval. So I am supposed to have him believe that I served him 1 gin and tonic instead of 4 Grey Goose and tonics, cancel out the transaction, and reissue the check to the customer.
Sure, if I were the bar manager, it would be simple. But I wasn't. And like wrjohnston said, if I did that too many times, I'd be caught.
@redskull: It's a campaign tool and nothing more. I hold to Bob Garfield's opinion that people who will attempt to defraud their own company without guile will do so regardless of some cheeky online tool from a restaurant. The ethical people don't even think about it in the first place.
@Tightlines: "We LOVE this thing" isn't criminal, either - it's an opinion. People can take Bob Garfield's comments at face value, and associate him with authority can do so. But it's an opinion, and no one has to think he's right.
My receipt charged $7.02 for an unsweetened iced tea. These fake prices are outrageous!
@bornonbord: What you say is true: I believe that you can use copies (or electronic scans) of receipts. This is the whole premise behind products like Neat Receipts that allow you to scan and itimize your bills and store them electronically for future reference.
@redskull: I downloaded one and have no intention of using it. And I thought it was pretty funny. It's just a way to advertise their restaraunt.
@GitEmSteveDave_IsWaving: In addition to what others have said above, several of the places I routinely shop (including at least one of the more expensive ones) use a bog-standard inkjet printer on 8.5x11 paper. Anyone with a scanner, decent software, and a bit of time could very easily cook up a convincing invoice for several thousand dollars, indistinguishable in every way.
@Murph1908: So you put in a steak and quickly run to the kitchen and tell them "Don't make that, my bad."
Then you tell your manager you accidentally added an extra food item, could he please void it. No worries--it didn't even get made.
Of course, this only works once or twice. It would be hard to make any real money that way -- it's not really worth your job to make an extra 10 bucks.
Site is down. It is probably being slammed.
@nbs2: The point isn't to just have a different name on the bags. If they simply wanted to avoid their name on the bag, they could've used plain brown paper bags. The point is that it's clever to hide an expensive meal in plain sight given the current attitude lots of Americans have toward bankers and traders right now. I'm sure they're loving the cease and desist orders because they're getting even more free attention via the Streissand effect.
@shepd: Many restaurants have the cash register attached to the surveillance video so the manager can review the video tape and watch the actions of the employee and see what transactions were entered into the register. It would be pretty obvious to see the bartender talking with the customer, ringing up 100 beers, not serving a single one, coming back some time later and voiding out 90 beers, and pocketing a huge tip.
Back about 20 years ago when I worked in a restaurant, I was watching the managers review the video tape when a bar till came up short (or had some suspicious transactions on it). Even though the video was extremely grainy, the managers could see exactly how the bartender was skimming the till a few dollars at a time, and they could see exactly what buttons on the register were being pressed (even though they did not have the registers connected to the video tape)
I once spent a week in a strange city, learning how to write software for a credit-card authorization terminal. After I got back to the office and had trouble documenting some of my expenses, I knew what program I wanted to write first.
Man, and to think I had the idea to make these into kisosks in the airport that printed out on thermal paper "novelty" receipts.....
@GitEmSteveDave_IsWaving: I concur with the above about copies of receipts. I think the killer will be when you submit a receipts for "Crapapple's Neighborhood Bar and Grill" and "Office Supply Hut".
Wow, everyone thinking you can use this to scam your employer's expense account and not even touching on the darker side of this novelty receipt idea.
You could be using this to create an alibi for your self with the significant other you're cheating on (shame on you!).
@GitEmSteveDave_IsWaving: You're living in the past. Every company I know accepts scanned copies now.
@seattlemaninblue: yup, that's what happens when your company outsources your accounts payable department to india and they have to email all the files over.
@nbs2: The AdAge article says the bags were from Sbarro, Olive Garden and Chipotle. As of press time Olive Garden and Chipotle had sent cease and desist letters.
Isn't this exactly why most retail outlets have special receipt paper that has their company logos and return policies on the back? Sure, the front might look all good and proper, but can it replicate the receipt's rear?
@Kogenta: Hehe, you said rear...
Err I mean YES, you are quite correct! So now we need to replicate the back of the receipt too.
@PsiCop: I don't necessarily love it and it may be unethical. But that doesn't necessarily take away from the fact that it's a creative and unique marketing idea. I wouldn't call it brilliant, but whether or not it's unethical I'd still call it smart.
@GitEmSteveDave_IsWaving:
Wrong. I've been scanning my receipts for several years now. I don't need to make them up; my clients like to eat, and I don't mind taking them out for a meal.
I worked with a guy who bought a pad of generic receipts with the bottom portion that you tear off showing the total. Account got suspicious when he turned in 50 receipts with consecutive serial numbers. NOW THAT IS BRILLIANT!
From the article:
Only an advertising guy could pronounce something "brilliant" at the same time he concedes it might be illegal. Way to go ... once again providing crystal-clear evidence of the character and ethics (or perhaps, lack thereof) in that industry.