21-Sep-18 – After falling to his death from Nakatomi Plaza, Hans Gruber arguably could not have made a dinner reservation in Chicago, but he and a few hundred other fictional diners did just that, costing Chicago restaurants money when they did not show up.

It was a scheme to make one online restaurant reservation system look better than another, according to the United States Attorney’s Office, and the man behind it is now facing criminal charges.

Steven Addison, a former Enterprise Operations Specialist in the Chicago office of OpenTable, was charged with one count of wire fraud for using fake names and fake email addresses to make more than 300 reservations at Chicago restaurants through Reserve, a competing online reservation system, according to a complaint filed in U.S. District Court on Thursday.

The 30-year-old did not personally profit from the scheme, according to the complaint, and OpenTable, based in San Francisco, was unaware of what Addison was doing.

The fake reservations were made between November 2017 and February 2018, sometimes on busy days – 22 fake reservations on New Year’s Eve and 24 on Valentine’s Day.

“Addison knew that these fake reservations would result in no diners appearing for the reservation and lost sales to the restaurants,” reads the complaint.

Addison allegedly exploited the fact that Reserve did not make sure email addresses and telephone numbers entered by its users were real. Other names used included Richard Ashcroft, former lead singer for The Verve, and Jimmy Smits, an actor.

His arraignment in federal court has not yet been scheduled.