A manager of a dining establishment at Santa Monica Place was arrested on Friday, Aug. 2 after admitting to stealing approximately $10,000 from the business to fund his gambling addiction.
At 2:58 pm officers of the Santa Monica Police Department were informed via radio that a theft had occurred at one of the dining establishments inside the mall’s food court.
The report stated that the reporting party was an investigating executive from out of state and that he had requested that the manager of the location be arrested.
The investigating executive had stated that the manager had confessed to taking approximately $10,000 worth of deposits, and that the manager had also confessed to this crime.
The officers spoke with this manager, and he confessed that he had in fact taken the money, adding that he had recently developed a gambling problem, and that he had “got in over his head.”
He said he had been in the habit of taking the store deposits and using the cash to gamble.
The officers discovered the manager was the only employee that had access to the store safe, and this information eliminated any other person from being suspected of taking the money.
The officers arrested the manager, aged 39, and a resident of Los Angeles, and he was charged with embezzlement.
Bail was set at $20,000.
Editor’s Note: These reports are part of a regular police coverage series entitled “Alert Police Blotter” (APB), which injects some minor editorial into certain police activities in Santa Monica. Not all of the Mirror’s coverage of incidents involving police are portrayed in this manner. More serious crimes and police-related activities are regularly reported without editorial in the pages of the Santa Monica Mirror and its website, smmirror.com.
