Delivery driver fakes delivering food, caught on cam stealing pizza in Oakland
OAKLAND, Calif. - A DoorDash driver was captured on camera ripping off an Oakland business with an unusually sneaky scam: faking a delivery and then stealing the food.
The business owner, who did not want to be identified, said the egregious act occurred on Wednesday when a manager ordered lunch for staff to cheer them up, but their delivery never came.
Surveillance video obtained by KTVU shows the delivery driver pull up in a blue sedan and remove boxes of pizza from the passenger side. He approaches the door, puts the pizza down and snaps a photo, before picking the food back up and setting it on the seat of his car.
It's common practice for food delivery drivers to snap a photo of the delivery to prove the package has arrived.
But this driver appears to have come up with a trick to make it look like he did his job and then pin the theft on someone else, like a passerby.
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The owner called DoorDash to complain and the company promptly provided them new pizzas. A DoorDash representative said she was looking into the matter.
"We take this report extremely seriously and are urgently investigating," DoorDash said in a statement to KTVU. "Any Dasher found to have stolen food will face consequences, including deactivation."
But the business owner said the whole thing just rubs salt in the wounds for his employees, who already had a really tough week.
On Sunday night, thieves rammed a stolen car through the steel garage door of the owner's shop. And on Monday night, the burglars destroyed the glass windows and stole about $500 of products.
The owner said in the last two days, he has spent $70,000 to board the place up and make repairs. He has since added a new rolling iron gate and concrete barriers. He asked not to be identified, including the name and location of his business, for fear of showing his shop's current vulnerability,
Pizza-gate on top of the back-to-back burglaries is simply just too much.
"I'm an ultimate optimist," the owner said. "But this makes me lose faith in humanity. I know there are good people out there. But the bad people right now are winning."