The owner, Derek Onstott, found the review and was less than pleased. He called the women (he got her number from a mutual friend) and left a number of messages for her. Among other things, he threatened to:

• Sue her for defamation of character.
• “drag her name through the mud”
• “mess up your life and job”

Well, you can see where this is going. Most rational people would have contacted the woman, apologized, and probably offered a free meal. End of story.

Not so in this case. You can read the full details over here, but the summary about should give you a pretty good picture. Derek Onstott is an absolute jerk, and now the world knows it.

Don’t talk about the awful Besa Mexican Grill and Cantina is a post from: The Streisand Effect

The police, understandably, didn’t care for it — it’s theft, pure and simple. In addition, these guys allegedly belonged to a local gang, so this video gave police a good reason to arrest them.

The problem is that the arrest has drawn a lot of attention to the video. In an article yesterday in the Press-Enterprise, they report that the video had been viewed 430 times. As of now, just one day later, the video has over 5,000 views and climbing rapidly.

I’ll admit I’m at a bit of a loss as to how the police should have handled it. The guys obviously deserve to be busted for this. However, this has drawn a lot more attention to the video, which has certainly led to copycats at other fast food restaurants around the country.

Update: 3/19/08, 11:12am — The video now has over 16,000 views.
Update: 3/20/08, 9:55am — The video now has over 33,000 views.
Update: 3/21/08 — The video was somewhere over 60,000 views, but has now been removed from YouTube.

The police tell everyone how to scam Del Taco is a post from: The Streisand Effect