Impersonated Vegas Restaurants Sue Uber Eats

Fake Las Vegas restaurant sues Uber Eats

He threatened legal action, and now he's taking action.

James Trees, chef and owner of Esther’s Kitchen, joins three other Las Vegas restaurants in filing a class-action lawsuit against Uber Eats. The lawsuit alleges that the website and app allow fraudulent food preparers to "use false identities, solicit well-known restaurant brands and identities...and exploit the goodwill created by actual business owners to steal business for themselves."

"How can you allow a company to be imitated and the reputations of people on your platform to be tarnished?" Treece asked Uber Eats in a Facebook post this week. “I wonder which of my lawyer friends are going to want to sue a major corporation for allowing crappy restaurants to pass off as a company I built from scratch?”

Esther’s Kitchen joined Gaetano’s Ristorante, Manizza’s Pizza and BabyStacks Café in filing a class-action lawsuit Wednesday in Clark County District Court.

Myspaghetti syndrome

Nearly 20 scam websites posing as reputable Sin City restaurants have been discovered on Uber Eats, Grubhub and other food delivery apps. (But most are purchased on Uber Eats.)

"The Uber Eats website and app allow anyone to impersonate a restaurant in Nevada without proper identity verification of the requesting party," the lawsuit states. The lawsuit alleges possible fraud, currency exchange, civil RICO, racketeering and acts of negligence.

In addition to Uber, the lawsuit names Rasen LLC, the payroll company through which Uber pays its drivers, Berchman Melancon, the management company that oversees Uber Eats in Nevada, and other individuals and entities.

Earlier this week, Uber Eats removed all scam websites after media reports, including ours, exposed the scam. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages from Uber for damages it has caused and a 30% cut on all orders from the defrauded restaurants.

“At a minimum, the Uber Defendants knew or should have known that the actual restaurants using its network services were not actual restaurants, and honest restaurants were harmed as a result,” the lawsuit states.

Court’s Judgment

The best way to avoid ordering from a scammer in the future is to call the phone number listed on the restaurant's reputable website and ask if delivery can be done through the app you plan to use, or, even simpler, use the app to order at Check whether an address is listed on Yelp on a grocery app, and in any case, it's best to check the restaurant's reviews first.

For example, the real Esther’s Kitchen is located at 1131 S. Main St. in downtown Las Vegas. Esther’s Italian Pasta Kitchen (an impostor on Uber Eats) lists its address as 10890 S. Eastern Ave., Suite 107, in Henderson. This is the actual address of a restaurant called NY Pizza & Bagel Café.

Gaetano's Ristorante is a respected family business that's been operating in Henderson, Nevada for 20 years, and the address listed on Uber Eats matches the Chinatown address of Boss Pizza, a restaurant with just 1.5 stars on Yelp Dining room. His address is also listed on the Solamente Pizza scam list.