Documentary recalls sick McDonald's phone scam
A chilling new Paramount+ documentary sheds light on a bizarre phone scam where fast-food managers were tricked into strip-searching workers.
Pervert: Hunting the Strip Search Caller, which will be available on the streaming platform from today, follows the disturbing story of Louise Ogborn, 18, who fell victim to the scammer while working at her local McDonald's restaurant in Mount Washington, Kentucky, in 2004.
During the call, which last three hours and 30 minutes, Ogborn was asked to remove her uniform layer by layer by assistant manager Donna Summers and later by her fiancé Walter Nix, who was called in by Summers to help. The stripping escalated to sexual assault, before the scam was found out and the caller hung up.
The investigation into Ogborn's case found that there had been several similar incidents happening across state lines from as early as 1994.
The investigation eventually led to the arrest of David Richard Stewart, who was charged with impersonating a police officer and solicitation of sodomy but acquitted of all charges in 2006.
No one else was ever found guilty of the crime, and calls stopped after Stewart's arrest, police later stated.
A documentary delves into the disturbing story of Louise Ogborn, 18, who fell victim to a perverted phone scam while working at her local McDonald's restaurant in Mount Washington, Kentucky, in 2004. She was forced to strip and to perform sexual acts on the restaurant's manager during the 3h30 ordeal
Ogborn later sued McDonald's for $200million in damages, saying they failed to protect her. She was awarded $5million in punitive damages and $1.1million in compensation, but eventually settled for $1.1million after McDonald's appealed the initial amount
In 2006, David Stewart, who was suspected of having orchestrated the calls to the restaurants, including Louise's was found not guilty. Police later said calls stopped following his arrest
In 1999, a pizza parlour worker from Blackfoot, Idaho, named Elizabeth was strip searched by her mamager during a similar scam call. She was only 16
In the documentary, Buddy Stump, the detective who took on Louise's case, now retired, recounted how he was called to the scene after the incident.
The mastermind behind the call had phoned the restaurant earlier in the evening, claiming to be 'Officer Scott' from the local police department.
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Share'Officer Scott' said he'd received a report that that an employee had stolen $50 from a customer's purse.
He gave a vague description of a petite blonde woman, identified by assistant manager Donna Summers as Louise Ogborn, who was working overtime that evening.
Louise was called to the back office, where Donna Summers, who was still on the phone with the perpetrator, informed her of what was going on.
CCTV footage showed assistant manager Donna Summers and Louise Ogborn in the McDonald's office during the call
'I was so distraught, I remember being upset that someone thought I could do something so horrible,'Louise later said in 2007.
Local news anchor Connie Leonard said in the documentary, giving a rundown of the bizarre events that took place during the call: 'Even Louise complies. She's probably thinking, "They'll realize this isn't me and I'll just obey right now and hopefully they'll help me out of this situation".'
However, the call descended into pure hell for 18-year Louise. During the ordeal, the caller instructed Donna to make the teenager layer by layer to make sure she wasn't hiding the money on her person.
Once she was naked, she was handed an apron to cover herself. Another employee was then tasked with bagging up Louise's clothes and moving them to her car, which meant she was stuck in the room.
'I didn't know what was behind the door, I didn't know if anyone was waiting for me and I didn't want to run out naked, I was really scared,' Louise said.
In the interview, which was shared in the documentary, Louise also said she 'feared for her life' during the assault.
Elizabeth, pictured now, said she felt 'extremely violated' by the 1999 incident but didn't feel empowered at the time to escape it
At this point, Donna Summers, who was in charge of the restaurant, began to question why the call was taking so long.
'And every time she starts to wonder "why is this taking so long?" he has an answer. "We're on our way, we just don't have many people working today, just bear with us." That sounds like a legitimate answer for Summers,' Connie said.
'However, she needs to get back to work, and the officer says "Well, look. Do you have a man in your life who you trust? Do you have a husband, a boyfriend, someone who you can maybe bring in who could watch her until we get there?"
'And so Donna Summers says "Yes, I have a fiancé Walter, he could come down".'
'I'm thinking, "What part of the right thing to do did you think this was?",' Stump said in the documentary.
Things escalated after Donna Summers left the room, with Walter Nix Jr now being instructed by the caller to smell Louise's breath and ask her to kiss him.
The 18-year-old was also instructed to show her genitalia to Walter Nix Jr to prove she had not hidden the $50 bill there.
Speaking in the documentary, news anchor Connie Leonard said the caller knew that smaller towns would have young, impressionable people working at their fast-food restaurants
David Stewart, pictured during his 2006 trial, told police he had never bought a phone card, but a search of his home at the time found a card that had been used to call nine restaurants in the past year
'The caller was telling me to say "yes sir, no sir" and if I didn't do it I'd "get punished",' Louise recalled, adding: 'I was petrified.'
CCTV footage of the ordeal saw a visibly distraught Louise bursting into tears and wiping her eyes several times throughout the call.
During the time they spent in the room, it was revealed that Louise was also coerced into giving oral sex to Walter Nix Jr in order to avoid punshiment.
Afterwards, Donna Summers' boyfriend realized he had done something 'wrong' and left the room.
It was reported at the time of the incident that Nix Jr had called a friend, saying: 'I have done something terribly bad.'
Summers then phoned a higher-level manager that the caller had claimed they had spoken to earlier.
The manager had been sleeping and said he was not aware of a police operation going on. At this point, the phone call was disconnected.
Ogborn, pictured during her lawsuit against McDonald's, dropped out of pre-med and underwent therapy for PTSD and depression following the ordeal
According to some eye-witness accounts, Summers became distraught and began to frantically apologize. She later broke off her engagement to Walter Nix Jr.
An employee thought to dial *69 to get the number of the last caller before anyone else could call the restaurant, which later helped the police investigation.
Ogborn was released from the office, wrapped in a blanket, and Nix Jr was charged with sexual assault, while officers began to look into who the man behind the call could be.
The investigation into the call found that Louise's case was the latest in a series of disturbing scam calls made to other restaurant countrywide, with other young women being put in similar vulnerable situations.
Speaking in the documentary, a woman only identified as Elizabeth, which was the perpetrator's 26th documented call, talked of her experience.
'That person was smart enough to know that smaller cities might have young, impressionable people working at their fast food restaurants,' Connie Leonard said.
Elizabeth was 16 and had taken a job at her local pizza parlor in Blackfoot Idaho when the restaurant received a phone call.
'I was raised to respect the authority of people in charge of me, teachers, people at church, people who are older than me,' she said in the documentary.
'I was a loyal, dutiful, always early employee.
'The manager told me he was on the phone with someone named Officer Davis, from the Blackfoot police department.'
The caller used the excuse of reported theft at the restaurant to order the manager to perform a strip search on Elizabeth.
The manager complied, even though the caller only gave an evasive description of the employee who had allegedly taken the money.
'What the hoax caller is doing on the phone is giving a very vague description and he knows there would be a young employee that fits the description of a petite, meek young woman,' Connie explained.
'I was protesting, I was adamant it wasn't ne. No matter what I said, the officer had a probable, plausible, reasonable answer for everything,' Elizabeth recalled.
'it began with removing my shoes, than my pants and then it was my uniform shirt, so just the progression of one item at a time with lots of talk between,' she recounted.
'The caller seems to love the slow pace of this, starts off easy to see if he can reel the people in,' Connie commented.
The wait and length of the call drove Elizabeth to feeling 'more and more hysterical,' she said.
'I'm just pleading and pleading. I just kept saying "this isn't right, this isn't right",' she said.
'He was asking my manager to describe my body. He wanted him to describe my breast, what my genitalia looked like and even my bra size.
'That's when I snatched the phone away screaming "how in the world could my bra cup size and all that type of stuff have anything at all to do with this allegedly stolen $50.'
But in spite of feeling something was wrong and feeling 'extremely violated and traumatized', Elizabeth revealed she didn't 'feel empowered enough to feel to get out of there.'
She was eventually rescued by another employee, called Derek who came to the restaurant and felt something was wrong.
When he heard that Elizabeth was being strip searched, he took the phone and said that a police officer should know it's illegal to strip search a minor, which prompted the caller to hang up the phone.
After the incident, Elizabeth went to the police, however, she claimed that law enforcement didn't intend to follow up and that the case 'wasn't a priority for them.'
Eventually, the investigation into Louise Ogborn's case found that the caller had contacted her restaurant using a At&T phone card at a payphone in Panama City.
Using the card's serial number, the investigative team were able to find where the card has been purchased and pulled CCTV from the store.
Footage revealed the purchaser in the Panama City video was wearing a correctional officer's uniform which resembled the ones used by a private security firm called Corrections Corporation of America.
The suspect was later identified as David R. Stewart – a married man with five children – who was then arrested.
While being questioned by police, Stewart claimed he never bought a phone card, however, a search found one at his home that had been used to call nine restaurants that year.
The search also found police uniforms, accessories and dozens of applications to police department jobs, which suggested Stewart had fantasized about being a police officer.
At the close of the investigation, Stewart was charged with falsely impersonating a police officer and for soliciting sodomy and faced 15 years in prison.
However, at his trial in 2006, he was acquitted of all charges, with prosecution thinking that the lack of direct evidence linking him to the crime might have led to the non-guilty verdict.
Walter Nix Jr was charged with sexual assault and was sentenced to five years in prison, while Donna Summers was sentenced to one year probation.
After the case, Louise dropped out of the University of Louisville, where she had intended to study pre-md, and underwent therapy for PTSD and depression.
Meanwhile, Donna Summers was fired by McDonald's for her involved in the call, based on the fact she had violated corporate policies that forbade strip-searches of employees, and also forbade non-employees to access the McDonald's office.
In 2007, Ogborn sued McDonald's for $200million on the grounds that corporate head offices were aware that restaurants were at risk of scam calls and failed to act on that threat.
That claim was made on the fact that the company had defended themselves against lawsuits over similar incidents in four other states.
Another ground for the company had also failed to act on the scam call threat by ignoring the recommendations made by McDonald's own chief of security in a memo to McDonald's upper management.
Summers also sued McDonald's for $50million, claiming they had failed to warn her about the previous hoaxes.
At the end of the trial, the wronged employee was awarded $5million in punitive damages, $1.1 million in compensatory damages and expenses.
McDonald's were also ordered to pay Ogborn and Summers' lawyers' $2.4 million in legal fees.
After the case was appealed by McDonald's several times, Louise settled for £1.1million
Pervert: Hunting the Strip Search Caller is available to stream exclusively on Paramount+ now
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