Restaurant loses £3,500 in private booking scam

Bavette in Horsforth has been scammed for upwards of £3,500

A popular Leeds restaurant has thanked customers for their support after being scammed out of more than £3,500.

Bavette, in Horsforth, took a private booking for the whole restaurant and paid for a house band at the customer's request, only to later find out it was a con.

It meant they were left out of pocket and with a potentially empty restaurant - but were able to run a full evening's service after putting out an appeal for late reservations on social media.

Owner Clément Cousin, 34, said the response was "touching and emotional".

Bavette, which is described as a "French neighbourhood bistro", opened in February 2024 and was named the UK's Best Local Restaurant by The Good Food Guide later that year.

Mr Cousin, who co-owns Bavette with husband and chef Sandy Jarvis, said the scam had been "bubbling along for three months" since they were first contacted by the scammer in September.

"It was for an anniversary and they asked if there could be a live band.

"He said the band was a surprise for his wife and didn't want her to see the transaction in their bank account, so asked if it would be OK to send us the money for the band, plus the deposit."

Clément Cousin opened Bavette in February 2024 with husband and chef Sandy Jarvis

The total fee was around £5,000 and Mr Cousin recommended a bank transfer as their preferred payment option.

However, the scammer insisted on paying via card, and agreed to also pay for the percentage fee taken by Bavette's third-party card machine provider, Dojo.

"The payment went through, then the band emailed me straight away with an invoice," said Mr Cousin. "It looked legitimate - so I paid.

However, the £5,000 turned out to be from a fake account and was "flagged" as suspicious and frozen by Bavette's bank, so the amount was never received.

In the meantime, the £3,500 fee had been paid to a band which did not exist - and the money instead went directly to the scammer.

"It was £3,500 which is a lot but when you think about it, is the band coming from London? They come with all their instruments, they're playing all night.

"Then the next day, our card machine provider called us in the morning to say, 'You got a big payment yesterday, can you tell us about it?'"

Mr Cousin said he initially defended the would-be customer, before the provider pointed out several red flags.

He continued: "This whole time, this man booking the table was like, 'I'm abroad for work, so I can't come in person'. I did Google the band in the meantime too but couldn't find anything.

"Dojo - who have been very good with us - said, 'It's an American bank, a large sum of money, you never met them, there's no physical card - we think it's a scam'."

Mr Cousin said because of the circumstances, Dojo had declined to release the £5,000 into Bavette's account for security reasons, as they suspected the money was stolen.

As no other bookings had been taken for the night of the "private party", Bavette faced further losses from the lack of a day's normal trading.

Bavette reached out to customers on Instagram after the scam left them with no bookings

They took to social media, posting an Instagram story alerting customers to the availability and offering a free welcome drink to anyone who made a reservation.

They were soon fully booked and ran a full evening's service.

"If we have an empty restaurant we're going to lose a big sum of money but I also have four front of house people, five chefs, one kitchen porter - I would have to cut their hours too," Mr Cousin added. "So I thought it was important for us to reach out on social media.

"It's been very overwhelming - we received easily 150 messages. We knew we had a strong community but it's very touching and it just show that there is still a lot of good people."

The case is currently being assessed by the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB), run by the City of London Police.

The NFIB responds to any reports made to Action Fraud and analyses them for potential leads.

They say once a report has been analysed, the victim will be informed of the next steps.

Mr Cousin said he is hopeful Bavette can still claim back the £3,500 lost, but has also urged other independent businesses to be wary of scammers.

"One red flag is that from the first email, this person asked us if we take credit card. Why would you ask that? Then also involving a third party, that's a massive red flag as well.

"Obviously they're going to evolve, there's going to be new scam every day. Because we're independent, maybe we're a bit more naïve.

"We got fooled but we want to make sure that no other business falls for the same thing."

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