Local business owners are pursuing legal action after a social media post claimed its employees were “snapping pictures of bank cards and trying to make purchases through online shopping apps” despite having no evidence to support the claim.
On Friday afternoon, Dasheiona Hayes took to Facebook claiming an employee at Sonic used her fiancé’s bank card to shop online.
“Sonic here in Paris, Tx has females that are snapping pictures of bank cards and trying to make purchases through online shopping apps! This has happened multiple times with different customers I have spoken with! Just today one of the worker’s tried to use my fiancé bank card to shop online, luckily his bank was quick to lock his card, and reported to him that there has been a fraudulent transaction!”
Mandeep and Mark Homer, owners of Sonic Drive-In restaurants in Lamar County, said they have spoken with the card holder, who provided no evidence to support the claims.
“We take this allegation extremely seriously and conducted an investigation into these claims. We have spoken with all parties involved and have found no evidence that a picture of any card was taken and further found no evidence, or been given any evidence, that show the connection of fraudulent charges relating back to a customer’s charge at Sonic. Since no evidence has been provided of this allegation, we consider this to be slander”.
After finding no evidence of the allegations and speaking with the card holder, the Homers have requested Ms. Hayes to remove the post.
“We have been in Paris for over 60-years and love our community. Allegations like this can really hurt a small businesses and we have done our due diligence in investigating this and ask that Ms. Hayes remove the post. The Homers have already begun legal action in this matter .”
According to security.org, nearly two-in-three people (65%) with credit or debit cards have experienced credit card fraud at least once.
“In the new technology era, where all of our information is on online, and we listen to the news and hear that millions were affected by large company data breaches (ex: ATT), it is likely that most people will be affected in one way or another by a fraudulent charge. If a fraudulent charge appears on a credit card, there is no way to know where the source of that fraud came from,” said Mandeep and Mark.
The couple, who own Sonic in both Paris and Reno, said if anyone feels there has been misconduct by an employee at one of their stores, to contact them at homergroup2021@gmail.com.
“With that said, we would also like to encourage anyone that has an issue, complaint or compliment related to anyone’s business, especially a small business like ours, to please give the business the courtesy of letting them know of a problem and giving them a chance to gather more information before posting it on social media. We are a small community and we are all in this together.”
Since this is now a legal matter, Homer Group said they will no longer be making public comments on this topic.
