Former Zaxby's cook sentenced to prison for stealing customers' card information

The name of the folder on his smart phone was titled "SCAM."

That's just one of the many way in which Grashawn Lanard Watkins' scheme went wrong. 

Watkins earlier this month had his day in court, where he pleaded guilty to 28 counts of identity fraud and three counts of financial transaction card theft and received six years behind bars and another 19 on probation. 

Watkins was a cook at Zaxby's back in 2020. A break in the case came after a customer noticed several suspicious charges on her credit/debit card. She contacted the restaurant, and managers and Milledgeville Police Department detectives viewed store security footage and watched Watkins “walk up to the register and take the debit card from the top of the register and put it in his pocket.” Watkins then walked into the dining room area for several minutes before returning the card. The victim was in the drive-thru and had “pulled forward to park and asked to wait for her food,” added the incident report. 

Watkins pleaded guilty to 28 counts of identity fraud, meaning he snapped pictures on his phone containing the information of at least 28 different customers.

Watkins eventually was arrested, and a search warrant was issued for his phone, which led detectives to a number of different victors in the SCAM folder.

"Obviously, there were quite a few victims. Once we were able to get into the phone, that's when we realized the scope of the scam," said Det. Everett January with the MPD.

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