The strip search phone call scam was a series of incidents, mostly occurring in rural areas of the United States, that extended over a period of at least ten years, starting in 1994. The incidents involved a man calling a restaurant or grocery store, claiming to be a police officer, and then convincing managers to conduct strip searches of employees (or, in at least two known cases, a customer), and to perform other bizarre and humiliating acts on behalf of "the police". The calls were most often made to fast-food restaurants in small towns.
More than 70 such phone calls were reported in 30 U.S. states. A 2004 incident in Mount Washington, Kentucky, led to the arrest of David Richard Stewart, a resident of Florida. Stewart was acquitted of all charges in the Mount Washington case. He was suspected of, but never charged with, making similar scam calls elsewhere. Police reported that the scam calls ended after Stewart's arrest.
Before the Mount Washington incident There were numerous prior incidents in many states that followed the pattern of the fraudulent call to a McDonald's restaurant in Mount Washington, Kentucky. The majority of the calls were made to fast-food chain restaurants, but some were made to grocery stores and video rental stores.
With every hoax, a male caller who identified himself as a police officer or other authority figure would contact a manager or supervisor. He would solicit their help in detaining an employee or customer who was suspected of a crime, such as theft or drug possession. He would then provide a generic description of the suspect (typically a young female employee, but a few victims were male or older) which the manager would recognize, and he would then ask the manager to search the suspected person. The tasks would initially start as strip searches before gradually becoming more invasive and sexual in nature as the "investigation" continued. Eventually, the caller would have groomed the manager to the point where they would do almost anything asked by the caller, such as spanking, kissing, inappropriate touching, oral sex, and even sexual assault and rape. Many of the incidents continued for hours until a participant realized the call was a hoax or a bystander intervened.
Some notable hoaxes were: On August 4, 1994, a man claiming to be a sheriff's deputy called a McDonald's restaurant in Saybrook Township, Ohio, stating that a customer's purse was stolen from the restaurant. The caller told two minor females working at the restaurant to allow the manager to strip search them. Two calls were reported in 1995: one in Devils Lake, North Dakota, and another in Fallon, Nevada. A man claiming to be an Oktibbeha County deputy sheriff called a Pizza Hut in Starkville, Mississippi, and accused an employee of stealing money from a restaurant customer. The manager of the restaurant was summoned to the restaurant in an order to strip search the employee. On January 20, 1999, a Burger King manager in Fargo, North Dakota, slapped the naked buttocks of a 17-year-old female employee after being instructed by someone on the phone claiming to be a police officer. On December 16, 1999, a 16-year-old female server working at a local pizza parlor in Blackfoot, Idaho, was taken to the manager's office after a phone call made by an individual only identifying as "Officer Davis" for the Blackfoot Police Department, accused an employee of stealing a woman's purse with a $50 bill in it earlier that evening. The caller persuaded the manager to strip-search the employee and to provide detailed descriptions of her naked body, including her breasts and genitalia. The incident ended when a 22-year-old male colleague of the victim came into the room and intervened, with the male employee confronting the "cop" on the phone before the caller hung up. On November 30, 2000, a Leitchfield, Kentucky, McDonald's manager undressed herself in the presence of a customer. The caller had convinced her that the customer was a "suspected sex offender" and that the manager, serving as bait, would enable undercover police officers to arrest him. In 2001, a Hooters restaurant manager in Charleston, West Virginia, told two female employees that a police officer had called the restaurant and reported a stolen change purse. The caller told the women to strip in front of the manager and threatened them with arrest if they did not do so. In December 2001, an Indianapolis-area Burger King restaurant's manager strip-searched a part-time, 15-year-old female employee in front of a male co-worker after a call was made to the business by a "policeman" claiming an employee stole a purse. The caller asked for a description of the employee's hair and tan lines. The search was also allegedly conducted in a room where other crew members could observe. On May 29, 2002, an 18-year-old female McDonald's employee in Iowa on her first day on the job was forced to strip naked, jog in place, and assume several poses, at the direction of a caller on the phone. In November 2002, a Taco Bell restaurant manager in Statesboro, Georgia, received a call from a "detective" claiming that a purse had been stolen from the lobby. The manager then took a 19-year-old female employee (based on the caller's description) to the manager's office, where he stripped the victim of her uniform, reading the clothing tags for the caller on the other end, and put them in a safe. During the incident, at the caller's orders, the manager also forced the employee to exercise before rubbing and inspecting most of her body, including the orifices. The caller claimed this was to see if any sweat had revealed signs of "green residue" on her body, indicating that she had made contact with the supposedly stolen money. On 26 January 2003, an Applebee's assistant manager in Davenport, Iowa, subjected a waitress to a 90-minute strip-search after receiving a collect call from someone who purported to be a regional manager for Applebee's. In February 2003, a phone call was made to a McDonald's in Hinesville, Georgia. The female manager (who believed she was speaking to a police officer who was with the director of operations for the restaurant's upper management) took a female employee into the women's bathroom and strip-searched her. She also brought in a 55-year-old male janitor, who conducted a body cavity search of the woman to "uncover hidden drugs". The cavity search entailed the janitor digitally probing the employee's vagina. McDonald's and GWD Management Corporation (owner and operator of the involved McDonald's restaurant) were taken to court over the incident. In 2005, John Francis Nangle, a senior judge for the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri, granted summary judgment to McDonald's and denied, in part, a summary judgment to GWD Management.30 March 2005, case 4:03‑cv‑00167‑JFN, United States District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, Savannah Division In 2006, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the judgments.28 September 2006, D. C. Docket no. 03-00167‑CV-4 , 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals On June 3, 2003, a Taco Bell manager in Juneau, Alaska, received a call from a man who claimed to be working for the company and investigating drug abuse at the restaurant where the manager worked. The manager then picked a 14-year-old female customer, whom he believed to be the suspect, strip-searched the customer and made her perform several lewd acts at the caller's request. In another incident on 5 June 2003, a Hardee's manager in Rapid City, South Dakota, was manipulated into strip-searching a female server and holding her against her will in his office for 3 hours after being told by a caller, claiming to be an officer for the city police, that an employee had stolen money from a customer. After searching her and finding no evidence of theft whatsoever, the caller then instructed the manager to check the employee for drugs instead, before telling him to touch intimate areas of the victim's body. She said he made her sit on his lap, touched her breasts and buttocks, and made her kneel in front of him while he looked in her hair, ears and mouth. In July 2003, a Winn-Dixie grocery store manager in Panama City, Florida, received a phone call instructing him to bring a female cashier (who matched a description provided by the caller) into an office where she was to be strip-searched. The cashier was forced to undress and assume various poses as part of the search. The incident ended when another manager entered the office to retrieve a set of keys. On October 16, 2003, in Salt Lake City, Utah, an Applebee's restaurant shift supervisor strip-searched a 42-year-old waitress after a "police officer" on the phone threatened to arrest staff members if they did not comply with his orders. On December 18, 2003, a call was placed to a Blockbuster Video franchise in Bismarck, North Dakota. The caller claimed to be an officer for the local police and accused an employee of theft, stating that the employee could be searched by a manager because of Blockbuster's "privacy policy". A female employee was then taken to the back office where she was subsequently strip-searched both by the manager and a male co-worker. In February 2004, four separate Wendy's restaurant branches within Plymouth County, Massachusetts (West Bridgewater, Abington, Whitman, and Wareham), were the targets of a strip-search phone call hoax in the course of a single night. On March 22, 2004, a 17-year-old high school student, enjoying lunch with her two friends at a Taco Bell in Fountain Hills, Arizona, was strip-searched by a 39-year-old male manager in the backroom, supposedly at the request of a police officer on the phone.
The Mount Washington incident On 9 April 2004, a call was made to a McDonald's restaurant in Mount Washington, Kentucky. According to assistant manager Donna Summers, the caller identified himself as a policeman, "Officer Scott". The caller gave Summers a vague description of a slightly built young white woman with dark hair, who was suspected of theft. Summers believed the description provided was that of Louise Ogborn, an eighteen-year-old who was currently on duty at the restaurant.
The police impersonator demanded that Ogborn be searched at the restaurant because no officers were available at the moment to handle such a minor matter. Ogborn was brought into an office and ordered to strip naked, with Summers placing the clothes in a bag and taking them to her car, as instructed. Ogborn then put on an apron to partially cover herself. Kim Dockery, another assistant manager, was present at that time; Dockery believed she was there as a witness to the search.
Dockery left after an hour, and Summers told the caller that she needed to be working at the restaurant's counter. The caller then told Summers to bring in someone whom she trusted to assist with the investigation. Summers first asked Jason Bradley, one of the restaurant's cooks, to watch Ogborn. When the caller told Bradley to remove Ogborn's apron and describe her, Bradley refused but took no further action, leaving the office. Summers then called her own fiancé, Walter Nix Jr., to help, who went to the restaurant and took over from Summers. After being told that a police officer was on the phone, Nix could be seen obeying the caller's instructions for the next two hours.
Nix removed the apron that Ogborn was wearing and ordered her to dance and perform jumping jacks while she was naked. Nix then ordered her to insert her fingers into her vagina and expose it to him as part of the "search". He also ordered her to sit on his lap and kiss him, and when she refused to do so, he spanked her until she promised to do so. The caller also spoke to Ogborn and demanded that she do as she was told or face worse punishment. Recalling the incident later, Ogborn said: "I was scared for my life."