Redding Restaurateur Arrested on Fraud Charges

REDDING, CT — The Redding woman who owns and operates an upscale French restaurant in Westchester County was arrested on fraud charges, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced on Tuesday.

Barbara "Bobbie" Meyzen, 57, proprietor of La Crémaillère Restaurant in Banksville, NY, was arrested in Connecticut and was presented Tuesday afternoon before United States Magistrate Judge Lisa Margaret Smith. Meyzen has owned and operated the La Crémaillère Restaurant since 1993.

According to the allegations in the complaint filed yesterday and unsealed today, from August 2015 to July 2016, Meyzen submitted applications for credit on behalf of La Crémaillère to at least nine lenders, factors, and financiers. In support of those applications, Meyzen gave the potential lenders La Crémaillère’s bank statements that she had modified to change negative balances to positive balances; to remove references to checks returned for insufficient funds; and to reduce service fees.

For example, Meyzen modified one month’s statement to change a negative beginning balance of $32,865.57 to a positive beginning balance of $27,766.29; to change from negative to positive the negative ending balance for that month of $5,268.13; and to change service charges of $2,385.60 to $8.00, according to the complaint. When one lender discovered that Meyzen had altered the bank statements, Meyzen created an email account in the name of one of the bank’s officers and sent the lender an email in which she, in the guise of the bank officer, told the lender that the statements were genuine.

Meyzen also falsely represented to the same lender that the second mortgage on the restaurant’s property in Banksville had been discharged, the complaint alleges. She created a false satisfaction of mortgage on which she forged the signature of a representative of the restaurant’s second mortgagee, who is Meyzen’s relative by marriage. Meyzen filed the false satisfaction of mortgage with the Westchester County Clerk, paid the clerk’s filing fee, and sent a copy of the filed satisfaction of mortgage to the lender, according to the complaint. Meyzen later denied filing the false satisfaction of mortgage or paying the filing fee when she was interviewed by the FBI. She told the FBI that she believed a loan broker with whom she had worked in the past, and whom she identified by name, had filed the false satisfaction of mortgage, according to the complaint.

Throughout the summer of 2017, Meyzen charged more than $80,000 in food and restaurant supplies to one of the restaurant’s customers who had left her credit card number on file at the restaurant. When the customer discovered the charges, Meyzen claimed the charges were a mistake and repeatedly promised to resolve the problem, the complaint reads. Meyzen gave the customer two checks in a total amount of $32,000 but the checks bounced. When she was interviewed by the FBI, Meyzen denied knowing anything about unauthorized charges to the customer’s credit card or ever speaking with the customer about the unauthorized charges, according to the complaint. Meyzen also denied giving the customer checks.

Meyzen Family Realty Associates, LLC, which owns the property from which the restaurant operates, filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in White Plains in September 2018. La Crémaillère Restaurant Corp., which operates the restaurant, filed for bankruptcy in April 2019. Meyzen is a part owner of both entities.

In May 2019, Meyzen misled the office of the United States Trustee, which oversees bankruptcy cases, about insurance coverage on the restaurant property, according to the complaint. Meyzen caused her bankruptcy counsel to give the United States Trustee and an attorney for Meyzen Family Realty’s largest creditor documents indicating that the property was insured when, in fact, the insurance coverage had been canceled months earlier for nonpayment.

Two days after La Crémaillère filed for bankruptcy in April 2019, Meyzen opened a bank account in her name and diverted more than $40,000 of the restaurant’s credit card receipts to that account, according to the complaint. Meyzen used a portion of that money to make payments to a food distributor and to an in-home nursing service. This account was closed on May 1, 2019.

On May 7, 2019, Meyzen opened an account in the name of Honey Bee Farm, LLC, at another bank and diverted La Crémaillère’s credit card receipts, as well as $20,000 in advances on La Crémaillère’s future credit card revenue, to that account, the complaint reads. Meyzen used a portion of that money to make a payment on Meyzen Family Realty’s mortgage and to pay food distributors, two wine wholesalers, a commercial trash service, a tableware and china company, and an employee of La Crémaillère.

"When Barbara Meyzen’s upscale clientele of bankers, celebrities, and other notable figures frequented her restaurant, they saw a stately French manor in a serene Westchester suburb. What they did not see was the alleged rampant financial fraud that was happening. As a result of her alleged fraud, Barbara Meyzen has potentially earned herself a reservation for one in federal prison," U.S. Attorney Geoffrey S. Berman said in a release.

Meyzen has been charged with one count of aggravated identity theft, one count of wire fraud, one count of mail fraud, one count of credit card fraud, two counts of making false statements, and one count of concealing a debtor’s property.