A trip to the Cyn Nightclub in Fort Lauderdale last Friday night turned into a night in jail thanks to what the two men at the center of the incident said was a credit card mistake. NBC 6’s Willard Shepard has the exclusive story.
A trip to the Cyn Nightclub in Fort Lauderdale last Friday night turned into a night in jail thanks to what the two men at the center of the incident said was a credit card mistake.
Don Marcani and his friend Marko went to Cyn last week and said they used their credit cards to pay for drinks at the bar. The duo then decided to go into the VIP section.
“At the VIP section, she took my credit card, too my ID, brought the bottle service out and after a while, she came back out and she told me, ‘Your credit card is declined,’ and I said, ‘that’s impossible,’” said Marcani.
Cyn’s official business name is still “Off the Hookah,” and Marcani’s credit card bill showed his Wells Fargo card paid $80 for drinks earlier in the evening, but when it came to the $600 VIP, the company declined the charge.
Marcani said he then tried a Capital One card he used earlier in the evening, but it too was declined. Marko then tried multiple times on the card he had used earlier in the club, but none of them went through either.
“The club manager called my bank and gave me the phone to talk to the bank and that’s when the cop interfered and I think he said, ‘I’m tired of this *expletive*,” Marcani said. “We even told them, walk us, escort us to the ATM machine.”
According to Marcani, the officer arrived at 3:49 a.m. and he was taken into custody a few minutes later on a charge of grand theft. Marcani was handcuffed and taken to the Broward County Jail.
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“I should not have been arrested,” Marcani said. “There’s no reason why this happened to me.”
Marcani said that at 3:57 a.m., just a few minutes after the officer was on scene and arrested him, Capital One was emailing him asking him to authorize the $600 charge. But, Marcani said there was no way he could see the email because police had confiscated his smart phone.
While the credit card wasn’t usable at the nightclub, when the Broward County Jail ran a charge for more than $1,000 for bond the next morning, the charge was approved and Marcani was sprung from the lockup.
“It wasn’t accepted at the nightclub, but I used that credit card to get out of jail,” Marcani said.
Fort Lauderdale Police told NBC 6’s Willard Shepard that they couldn’t respond to the allegations and the State Attorney’s Office said they don’t talk about pending cases. Marcani’s lawyer, David Edelstein, said this was a wake-up call for everyone.
“I think we are all used to getting those emails from credit card companies saying, ‘Hey, did you authorize this charge?” Edelstein said. “Now, we have to worry about getting arrested for using our own credit card.”
Marcani said he works for a company that transports computer products, so security is crucial, but now his mugshot is on the internet. He said he hopes that his record will be completely cleared at some point.
