“…(the defendant) stole money from her customers by double billing their credit cards, the prosecutor said…(she) took credit card slips from sales at her restaurant during the summer of 2010 and later that year, and ran them through for payment a second time after the 
restaurant had closed…may have stolen as much as $80,000 through the fraudulent credit card charges.”
A former local restaurant owner who stole more than $67,000 from banks and customers through check and credit card fraud, but who has since paid it back, has been ordered to spend 60 days in jail for her crimes. Having pleaded no contest last fall to two felony theft charges, Jennifer Lozano, 43, on Thursday received an overall sentence of five years with all but 60 days suspended and will have to serve two years of probation upon her release.
As part of a plea deal, prosecutors had agreed to cap the unsuspended part of the sentence at nine months if Lozano paid $67,399 in restitution to people and financial institutions she stole money from. She did so, paying off the final $18,000 she owed in restitution just as the sentencing hearing was about to begin Thursday afternoon in Hancock County Superior Court.
Kellett said an investigation revealed that Lozano conducted 1,488 fraudulent duplicate credit card transactions in the fall of 2010. She repaid many customers who complained, and many were repaid by their credit card companies, but she did not repay everyone who lost money through the scheme before police learned about it. As part of the restitution order, Lozano had to repay $15,300 to a credit card company that had lost money through the fraud and to customers whom she had not already repaid.
But Kellett said that restitution amount does not reflect the full scope of the illegal credit card transactions that Lozano made. Investigators believe that not all the double-billed customers complained, and so were not repaid either by Lozano or by their credit card firms.
