Serial Dine-and-Dasher Dodged Bill for $1,200 Whisky

People who have amassed stacks of Bergdorf Goodman shopping bags or have memorized the brunch menu at Barney’s in-house restaurant like to say that if you have to ask how much something costs, you can’t afford it. But people like Nick Cooper know that it doesn’t matter how much something costs, because you’re going to skip out on your bill, anyway.

According to The Times, the 21-year-old Brit has been repeatedly arrested in the past few weeks after skipping out on crazy-expensive restaurant bills in Washington, DC, including an unpaid tab that included a $1,200 glass of Teeling Irish whisky. His impressively chaotic month started when he was picked up by police officers after being drunk, disorderly, and standing in the middle of the road in front of the White House.

After being released for that incident, Cooper allegedly targeted DC’s most high-end hotels, placing pricey dinner orders for lamb, grilled octopus, and fresh oysters, and then charging those meals to other people’s rooms. The Washington Post reports that over the course of the past month, the total damage from his repeated dining-and-dashing has added up to over $2,850. And, worse than that, he has been chatting up other diners by telling them that he’s from London’s swanky Kensington neighborhood, when in fact he’s from just outside Liverpool. The shame.

At the Willard, he signed his $68.20 check with a fake name and fake hotel room; at the Old Ebbitt Grill, he put his $67.91 tab on a closed credit card; and there’s a good chance that he was the dude who ordered $500 worth of wine and oysters at the Hay-Adams, but left another fake room number on his receipt.

Cooper’s pièce de résistance, though, was at the Ritz-Carlton on March 23. That night, he ordered grilled octopus, a rack of lamb, a $156 bottle of red wine, and that $1,200 swig of Teeling—and then he charged the entire thing to the room of Denver Nuggets player Trey Lyles, who was staying at the hotel after a game against the Washington Wizards.

The Post says that he was stopped by police in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton and, when he refused to pull his hands out of his pocket, he was tackled to the ground. He was arrested for the third time and, for the third time, he was released from custody.

“It was amusing watching him drink expensive drink after expensive drink over the period of a couple of hours,” Michael Bishop, the director of the National Churchill Library and Center at George Washington University, told the Post. “He appeared knowledgeable.”

Cooper’s next court date is scheduled for April 12. Who wants to bet he orders a lot of oysters and whisky between now and then?