A dine and dash is a form of theft by fraud, in which a patron orders and consumes food and beverages from a restaurant or similar establishment with the intent not to pay. The act may involve the customerleaving the restaurant with the intent of evading payment, or, less commonly, of the patron eating the food and then stating that they do not have any money. There are numerous slang variations for this act, such as "dine and ditch", "eat and run", "eat it and beat it", “chew and screw”, "bite and bolt", and "doing a runner".
In English law, "dine and dash" falls under the crime of making off without payment introduced in 1978; the law was later copied in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Simply failing to pay a bill when due is generally not a crime in most United States circumstances or jurisdictions. It is a contract debt, and the act is civil rather than criminal in nature. However, there are often laws that apply specifically to restaurants, hotels, and other circumstances, where the presumption is that the customer intended to never pay their bill in advance and therefore obtained the valuable services under false pretenses, a form of criminal fraud. In certain states, dining and dashing is not labelled as a criminal issue. For example, in California, it is considered a petty theft, while in Mississippi, it is a felony offense to refuse to pay a bill over $25.00. In one case, Paul Guadalupe Gonzales, who became known as the "Dine-and-Dash Dater", was arrested and charged with 10 felonies after 13 women came forward about his actions. Sometimes the establishment may make their employees pay the cost of customer theft to give them an incentive to police their customers. They may do so explicitly by deducting unpaid meals from wages or tips, or implicitly through an end-of-shift reconciliation system whereby the server is expected to provide enough cash and credit card receipts to cover the cost of their customers' meals, and keeps any surplus as tips. In some locales, this is an illegal form of wage theft, and if the server is held responsible for tabs that are not paid, the employer is liable for paying back the server's stolen wages. In Michigan and many other states, "Defrauding an innkeeper" is a specialized statutory misdemeanor offense, with a maximum penalty of 93 days in jail and a fine of up to $500 and possible probation for up to 2 years. It can be charged either under state law or local ordinance. The gravamen of this offense involved failure to pay an incurred bill at a bar, cafe, hotel, motel or restaurant with intent to defraudthe business establishment.
