Don Marcani (WTVJ-TV)
A Florida man was jailed
earlier this month after a police officer became impatient with his attempts to
pay for drinks with a credit card.
Don Marcani said he and a
friend went Oct. 3 to Cyn Nightclub in Fort Lauderdale, where they paid for
drinks at the bar with their credit cards.
The men then decided to visit
the club’s VIP section, reported WTVJ-TV.
Marcani said a club employee
took his credit card and ID and brought out a bottle of liquor, but he said she
returned and reported his credit card had been declined.
“That’s impossible,” Marcani
told the waitress.
He then gave her another credit
card to pay for the $600 tab in the VIP section, the station reported — but
that, too, was declined.
Marcani tried again to use the
card he’d previously used to pay for an $80 bar tab at the club, but it was
declined again — and a police officer was called.
“The club manager called my
bank and gave me the phone to talk to the bank and that’s when the cop
interfered and I think he said, ‘I’m tired of this sh*t,” Marcani said.
Marcani asked the officer to
escort him and his friend to the nearest ATM so he could withdraw cash to pay
the club, but he was instead handcuffed and arrested on grand theft charges
shortly after the officer arrived.
The officer took his smart
phone, which prevented Marcani from seeing an email from his bank that arrived
eight minutes later asking him to authorize the $600 charge.
Marcani used the same credit
card the following morning to pay bond of more than $1,000 for his release from
the Broward County Jail.
“It wasn’t accepted at the
nightclub, but I used that credit card to get out of jail,” Marcani said.
Fort Lauderdale police declined
to comment on the case because it was still pending, but Marcani’s attorney
said it should be a wakeup call.
“I think we are all used to
getting those emails from credit card companies saying, ‘Hey, did you authorize
this charge?” said attorney David Edelstein. “Now we have to worry about
getting arrested for using our own credit card.”
