Facebook used to track down dine-and-dash hoons

Five Australians who fled a restaurant without paying the bill got their come-uppance when the owner tracked them down using social networking site Facebook.

Peter Leary, who owns seafood restaurant Seagrass at Melbourne’s Southbank precinct, was left with an unpaid bill of $520 when the young diners slipped out for a smoke and never came back.

But Leary says one of the diners had asked him about a former waitress, whom he then contacted. She suggested he look on her Facebook profile to track them down.

“We searched a few names and there in front of us his face came up,” Leary told Reuters. “He was pictured with his girlfriend, who was the only girl in the group. We also knew where he worked, at a nearby restaurant, which was handy. It’d been clear they were in the trade.”

Leary contacted the restaurant, and within hours the offender returned to pay the entire bill, plus tip. But Leary was later contacted by the fellow restaurant owner to inform him the offender, and his girlfriend, had been sacked.

“On this occasion I guess you could say that being on Facebook backfired for them,” Leary says.