Boca Raton Waitress Charged With Fraud After Allegedly Stiffing Diner

Jamie Lyn Massa (Photo: Palm Beach County Jail/ West Detention Center)

A Boca Raton waitress has been charged with fraud after allegedly pocketing the revenue from customers’ checks during her shift.

Jamie Lyn Massa, 53, of Boca Raton, was charged with organized fraud under $20,000, a third-degree felony, after Boca Raton police were called about Tuesday to The Griddle, a diner on Spanish River Boulevard, on a report of embezzlement, according to a probable cause affidavit filed in court this week.

Police said the restaurant’s owner reported that Massa was the only server working Monday from 6 a.m. to 1 p.m. After her shift, Massa turned in credit card and cash paperwork and the money she said was owed to the business, then left, the affidavit said. While reviewing Monday’s paperwork Tuesday, the owner found 14 cash receipts totaling $482.69 were missing from Massa’s turn-in, though matching kitchen tickets were located, police said. The owner told officers the cash Massa submitted did not match what should have been collected.

A customer who paid in cash was among those whose tickets were listed as missing, according to the affidavit.

After being advised of her rights, the report states Massa told police she had turned in all of her credit card and cash receipts and the money owed to the restaurant. She denied that 14 tickets were missing or that $482.69 in cash had not been turned in, the affidavit said. Investigators wrote that some of the unaccounted-for tickets appeared to have been paid at a card terminal, but the owner found no record those transactions actually having been rung into the system. The rest were cash payments, police said.

Officers alleged Massa collected cash from customers and kept it, systematically leaving cash tickets out of her close-out because credit-card sales were tracked.

Massa remained lodged in the Palm Beach County West Detention Center on Thursday in lieu of $2,000 bail.