FAIRFAX, Va. (7News) — Northern Virginia man Alex Kang's birthday is in September, and he's already shared the one gift that's on his mind: Stopping dine-and-dashers at his Fairfax, Va., restaurant.
Kang owns the Okonomi Asian Grill, and he said since April, people have been ordering through the food delivery service DoorDash, but then canceled their orders after they picked up the food in person. He believes it started as a TikTok trend.
On Tuesday, Kang issued a $150 "bounty" for information to help identify a frequent perpetrator, a man who he said has been using aliases and different accounts to carry out the scheme at least four separate times.
"I saw a cat poster in my neighborhood and thought I'd try something similar," Kang told 7News. He later added that the cat poster had a reward for $200, so he purposefully made the bounty reward less than that.
As of Wednesday morning, Kang said he's received tips from people with links to social media accounts likely connected to the individual, but nothing concrete.
Kang told 7News the suspect in question - who is now on City of Fairfax Police Department's radar - orders two or three meals at a time on DoorDash, picks up the food in-person at the restaurant, and cancels the order on the app before an employee has a chance to press the button confirming the pick-up.
"There's also a button when it's picked up. If my workers don't press that button before handing over the food, then they have a 10-second gap where they can cancel the order," Kang said. "We've changed the protocol now where we see the person coming to pick it up, we just immediately press it's been picked up."
This suspect has stolen $150 worth of food across all four incidents, according to Kang.
Kang also said their latest method to dealing with this suspect has not worked.
"What he's doing now is he's actually calling DoorDash immediately after the transaction saying the restaurant is closed or the restaurant couldn't fulfill the order. What that triggers is DoorDash shuts down the store," Kang said.
Kang said the man used different names like Simbarashe, Walter, and Courtney to place the orders for himself and others, but would make excuses for the cancellations.
The most recent incident happened on August 5 at around 8:30 p.m., when the alleged dine-and-dasher picked up an order for $26.50 and canceled it after receiving the food, according to Fairfax City police.
Kang told 7News that his workers thwarted one of the attempts, and would not give him the food until he reordered the food. Kang said he wasn't there at the time.
He filed reports with the City of Fairfax Police for each incident, but they haven't been able to make an arrest. Police officials said they caught another person using the same scheme, but the case remains inactive until they can identify the man.
After the first incident, Kang said the responding officer laughed at how bizarre the situation was.
"I get why she was so confused and laughed about it," Kang told 7News over the phone.
7News reached out to City of Fairfax Police, asking them the following questions:
A spokesperson said, "There were three in April and one on August 5th but other than that no. From what I’ve seen the restaurant has been targeted 4 times this year. We want restaurants to verify the DoorDash transaction before they hand the order over to the person picking it up."
Kang's biggest frustration has come from DoorDash's response to these incidents.
At the time of his interview with 7News Wednesday night, Kang said the food delivery and pick-up app had not reimbursed him for the stolen food and would not give the suspect's account information to him or police.
"You're actually taking the side of the customer and believing we're closed over me, your partner - contractual partner - saying, 'Hey, this guy has stolen from us multiple times with multiple accounts.' We have police reports," Kang said. "Monday's incident, I spent two hours Monday night dealing with DoorDash, trying to get everything written down, trying to get my money back. At 6 a.m. the next day, they give me a call and I'm on the phone for three hours. Two of those hours, they adamantly argue they won't pay me my money because the customer said so. I have surveillance footage. How do you not believe the surveillance footage?"
7News On Your Side asked DoorDash:
It was not until 7News reached out that a spokesperson said they have identified the four fraudulent orders and deactivated his accounts.
The spokesperson provided this statement:
At DoorDash, we have no tolerance for fraud and we will not allow anyone to target or abuse merchants on our platform.We’ve reimbursed the restaurant for the orders and will deactivate the customer accounts involved.We're reaching out to the restaurant owner to provide additional support and stand ready to support police with any investigation into this incident.Importantly, we’ve put in place robust anti-fraud measures and are always working to strengthen them to better protect merchants.However, the DoorDash spokesperson claimed they had not received a request from police.
Kang disputed this.
"In one of the cases, one of the officers is a regular," Kang said. "He actually went out of his way, talked with DoorDash for two hours, gave them all of the proper information saying, 'I'm law enforcement,' and he got nothing."
According to the DoorDash Merchant Help website, merchants aren't always immediately notified when a person cancels their order.
7News asked Kang if he has updated staff training and protocols in the wake of these incidents.
"We have pictures of the guy in our kitchen," Kang said. "I do 80-hour work weeks right now, that's asking a lot to be present the entire time just for this one guy."
In the meantime, Kang said he will continue speaking out about this suspect, in order to help prevent other restaurants in the area from falling victim to the same suspect.
"Other restaurant owners in the area can't speak English, English is their second language, third language, fourth language," Kang said. "It's one of those things where if this guy is doing this to me, he's guaranteed doing it to other restaurants."
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