News

How ‘gastrojeta’ escaped from paying restaurant bills

One of the country's biggest food thieves arrested again.

Click here to read the Spanish version.

The Lithuanian is in the news again, after repeating the same illegal practice that he has been carrying out since November 2022, and for which he has been arrested twenty times. Well, the National Police has arrested the Lithuanian again twice in less than a week for going to restaurants in the center of Alicante and refusing to pay the bill. 

His procedure is as follows: he feigns fainting and indisposition to evade payment in the key of fraud, as a simulation with which he has generated a history of antecedents and ‘simpas’ that led him to receive the alias of ‘gastrojeta’.

In all these cases, the individual shows a pattern of behavior reflected in a file in which dishes such as rice with lobster or entrecots stand out, always accompanied by multiple ‘White Label’ whiskies. Apparently, he shows total impunity and does not flinch in the face of arrests.

The threat of the ‘gastrojeta‘ has been haunting the national scene for some time now, to which is added the latest case in which he was caught after trying to leave without paying in a restaurant in the Calle Mayor in Alicante and in a barracks of the Bonfires of San Juan. 

The swindling diner, not wanting to pay the bill and being ‘caught’ by the police, simulated a heart attack, generating a surreal performance just for not paying a bill of 34.85 euros for a rice and two whiskeys. He was then arrested and taken to the cells of the Provincial Police Station, where he will be brought to court for a quick trial for a minor offense of swindling.