Busy Chef Dan Kaufman is facing seven years in jail for his alleged credit card fraud scheme — but this week, he was a crime victim himself!
A lawyer for Kaufman, a former manager of the Busy Chef restaurant at the corner of Cranberry and Henry streets in Brooklyn Heights, said his client returned home one night this week to find that his locks had been changed and his apartment had been ransacked.
Here’s where it gets interesting: Kaufman rented the Pierrepont Street apartment from Alan Young, his partner at Busy Chef.
A locksmith finally appeared later that night and let Kaufman back into his apartment near Clinton Street — only for Kaufman to discover that the entire place had been “ransacked,” Brill said.
Kaufman chose not to file a police report, his lawyer added.
Young did not return a call for comment.
The two were partners at a four-restaurant mini-empire on Henry Street — but all of the eateries, including Busy Chef, Oven, the Blue Pig and the Wine Bar at 50 Henry Street, were shuttered in the wake of the criminal investigation.
For the record, Brill said his client is innocent of the identity theft and credit card fraud charges, claiming instead that Kaufman was a scapegoat of larger crimes by Young and others.
