A year or so back we noticed that a somewhat intriguing entry had been submitted to our sister site Caboodle.hu‘s list of caterers and party planners. What piqued our interest about Cheflaszlo was that it advertised high-quality catering not only in Budapest, but also in Los Angeles, Malibu, Beverly Hills, London and New York. Well, we didn’t know the half of it! Because as it turns out, the L.A.-based “Chef László” was recently revealed to have helped the American F.B.I. apprehend a notorious con-artist, using the latest in high-tech cyber-crime-fighting techniques.
We found the story via Hungarian tabloid Blikk, but the paper seems to have picked it up from the Los Angeles Times, which broke it earlier this month. Since the Times requires that you register to read, and Blikk requires you to speak Hungarian, we’ll give you the basics of the story.
After a fraudster by the name of Kathleen Legaspi used a bogus check to “chew and screw” him out of his fee for catering a large birthday party, the 30-year-old chef – who is ID’d in the Times as “Laszlo Andras” and by Blikk as László Szűcs – turned to the police. But when the cops failed to offer any satisfaction, he put together a website called www.superripoff.com, posting details about the scamstress. As other victims googled her name and aliases, they found his site, and added their own information, allowing the fuzz to eventually make an arrest. Legaspi is currently in the pokey, and, since the story was picked up by the wires, Szűcs/Andras got his face on newspapers across America, and now the world.
Not much we can add to this, other than if you ever need someone who can help you track down a dangerous criminal while at the same time whipping up two dozen orders of oven roasted goose drumsticks with champagne and chestnut-scented cabbage and château potatoes, we think we know just the man.
