Published: November 11, 2009 08:39 am      

Man charged with credit card abuse

A Huntsville man was arrested early Monday morning and charged with credit card abuse after several incidents of theft were discovered at a Huntsville fast food restaurant.

On Sunday night, a customer of the Huntsville Wendy’s location returned to the store after dining there earlier in the evening and asked to speak to the manager.

The customer informed the manager that their credit card account had been charged twice for their meal.

This prompted the manager to conduct an internal audit of the cash registers, at which time it was discovered that several credit cards had been charged twice by a single cashier, identified as Christopher Rios, 32, of Huntsville.

After making the discovery the manager contacted law enforcement, and a Huntsville police officer was dispatched to the restaurant, where Rios was arrested and charged with one count of credit card abuse.

A brief background check using his driver’s license revealed that Rios had five outstanding warrants for his arrest in Brazos County, all stemming from credit card abuse charges.

Rios was transported to the Walker County Jail where he was interviewed on Monday by HPD Detective Ken Foulch.

Foulch said Rios confessed to the crime and described his method as swiping the card, then waiting for the customer to leave and charging the same customer again for the same amount of money. He would then take the amount from the second charge from the register in cash, and pocket it.

Rios told Foulch he had been double charging cards since September, and was motivated by a need to earn extra money for his family.