Ex-fast food manager stole $232K, spent nearly all of it at Bay Area casino

A former manager of a Redwood City Jack in the Box admitted to stealing almost a quarter million dollars from the restaurant and spending nearly all of the money on gambling. The manager of the restaurant at 986 Woodside Road in Redwood City told police that he kept $232,282 of restaurant income over the course of several months, Steve Wagstaffe, the San Mateo County district attorney, told SFGATE. 

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The scheme took place between Jan. 1 and Aug. 1, 2025, according to court documents viewed by SFGATE. During that time, Wagstaffe said, the manager pocketed cash from 120 restaurant deposits before they were placed in bank bags.

“This is just a regular Jack in the Box on Woodside Road. Nothing big about it. And yet it was just in eight months he was able to take that amount of money,” Wagstaffe said. “… They were to be deposits made from restaurant income that day, everything they took in that day.”

The theft went undetected until a general manager, who oversees the Woodside restaurant and two others in the area, had an accountant track the income of each location. The accountant noticed a “tremendous drop-off” in the Woodside restaurant’s revenue and eventually confronted the manager about the loss, the DA said. 

The Woodside manager admitted to stealing the cash because he had a “gambling problem,” according to Wagstaffe. The Redwood City Police Department searched the manager’s home and accounts, though investigators did not find any of the stolen money.

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The manager told police that he spent nearly all the money at Bay 101, a casino in San Jose, the DA said. He also used $4,000 of the cash to finance a Mustang, the DA added. 

“He wasn’t a very good gambler,” Wagstaffe said. “… The staff all knew him because he he would go there and play in tournaments for things like blackjack with other players. He was a big-time spender there.”

The manager entered a no contest plea to the felony embezzlement charge on Tuesday and is set to be sentenced on Dec. 10, court records show. Wagstaffe expects the manager to receive a lesser sentence because he “accepted full responsibility for it from the beginning” and doesn’t have a criminal record.