Takeaway owner loses £8,650 in suspected Just Eat scam

A takeaway owner has been scammed out of almost £9,000 after bank details on his Just Eat delivery service were changed, meaning someone else got the money he earned.

Joe Morgan, who owns Nemo’s fish and chips takeaway in Finaghy, said his business was one of many hit by the fraud, with Just Eat and the PSNI now investigating.

An estimated £15,000 has been lost by the businesses in total, the BBC reported and the Northern Ireland Takeaway Association told Good Morning Ulster it had been helping the takeaways that have reported losses.

Mr Morgan told the programme he was “devastated” after he did not receive £8,650 and has to borrow money from the bank to keep his takeaway open.

He said: “There’s no other way around it, if I don’t borrow money I won’t survive.

“It means very, very hard months ahead, it means I’ll have to borrow money to pay suppliers, PAYE, HMRC – there’s a lot of stuff that people don’t see in the background. Chips don’t just make themselves.

“I’ve never been in this bad a shape. For the staff, it’s not good for them wondering if they’re going to get paid.”

Michael Henderson, the director of the Northern Ireland Takeaways Association, said: “We aren’t here to point fingers… the one thing we know is that these takeaways are heartbroken.”

Just Eat told the BBC it was investigating, adding: “We take the safeguarding of restaurant accounts on the Just Eat platform extremely seriously.

“We always advise restaurant partners to be vigilant about their online security and recommend that they use unique passwords for different online platforms.

“We continually review our security measures.”