Former Restaurant Owner Sentenced To Prison For Fraud

BANKSVILLE, NY — The former owner and operator of an upscale Westchester restaurant will be going to prison for fraud. Audrey Strauss, the acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said Wednesday that Barbara Meyzen, also known as Bobbie, was sentenced to two years in prison for fraud in connection with her multi-year scheme to defraud the restaurant's lenders, mortgagee, creditors and customers.

Meyzen pleaded guilty in March to one count of wire fraud.

In addition to the prison term, she will have to serve two years of supervised release and pay forfeiture and restitution each in the amount of $320,289.35.

Meyzen, of Redding, Connecticut, owned and operated the La Cremaillere in Banksville for more than 25 years.

According to prosecutors, the fraud started out as an attempt to get a line of credit for the restaurant and ballooned into theft from a customer who had left her credit card number on file. Meyzen also lied to the bankruptcy court and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The fraud grew more and more elaborate, authorities said. At one point she pretended to be a bank official. At the end she was diverting the restaurant's credit card revenues to pay bills to food and wine distributors, an employee, a trash service and a tableware and china company.

From August 2015 to July 2016, she submitted applications for credit on behalf of the restaurant to at least nine lenders, factors and financiers. In support of those applications, she gave the potential lenders La Cremaillere's bank statements that she had modified to change negative balances to positive balances, to remove references to checks returned for insufficient funds and to reduce service fees.

When one lender discovered that Meyzen had changed the bank statements, she created an email account in the name of one of the bank's officers and sent the lender an email in which she pretended to be the bank officer and told the lender that the statements were genuine.

She also falsely represented to the same lender that the second mortgage on the restaurant's property in Banksville had been discharged. She created a false satisfaction of mortgage on which she forged the signature of a representative of the restaurant's second mortgagee, who is a relative by marriage. She filed the false satisfaction of mortgage with the Westchester county clerk, paid the clerk's filing fee, and sent a copy of the filed satisfaction of mortgage to the lender.

She later denied filing the false satisfaction of mortgage or paying the filing fee when she was interviewed by special agents of the FBI, telling them that she believed a loan broker with whom she had worked in the past, and whom she identified by name, had filed the false satisfaction of mortgage.

Throughout the summer of 2017, Meyzen charged more than $80,000 in food and restaurant supplies to one of the restaurant's customers who had left her credit card number on file at the restaurant. When the customer discovered the charges, Meyzen claimed the charges were a mistake and repeatedly promised to resolve the problem. She gave the customer two checks amounting to $32,000, but the checks bounced.

When she was interviewed by the FBI, Meyzen denied knowing anything about unauthorized charges to the customer's credit card or ever speaking with the customer about the unauthorized charges. She also denied giving the customer checks.

Meyzen Family Realty Associates, LLC, which owns the real property from which the restaurant operates, filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains in September 2018. La Cremaillere Restaurant Corp., which operates the restaurant, filed for bankruptcy in April 2019. Meyzen was a part owner of both entities.

In May 2019, she misled the office of the United States Trustee, which oversees bankruptcy cases, about insurance coverage on the restaurant property. She caused her bankruptcy counsel to give the United States Trustee and an attorney for Meyzen Family Realty's largest creditor documents indicating that the property was insured when the insurance coverage had been canceled months earlier for nonpayment. She knew that the coverage had been canceled because her insurance broker had communicated with her several times about the cancellation of the policies, authorities said.

In June 2019, Meyzen falsely testified under oath in a deposition conducted by the United States Trustee that she was not aware that the insurance had been canceled when she caused her attorney to turn the documents over to the United States Trustee.

Two days after La Cremaillere filed for bankruptcy in April 2019, Meyzen opened a bank account in her name and diverted more than $40,000 of the restaurant's credit card receipts to that account. She used a portion of that money to make payments to a food distributor and to an in-home nursing service. The ban account was closed May 1, 2019.

On May 7, 2019, She opened an account in the name of Honey Bee Farm, LLC, at another bank and diverted La Cremaillere's credit card receipts, as well as $20,000 in advances on La Cremaillere's future credit card revenue, to that account. She used a portion of that money to make a payment on Meyzen Family Realty's mortgage and to pay food distributors, two wine wholesalers, a commercial trash service, a tableware and china company and an employee of La Cremaillere.

The restaurant is closed.

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