Aidas J., a 50-year-old Lithuanian man residing in the sunny Spanish city of Alicante, earned a reputation that is anything but bright. He became locally infamous for a truly bizarre dining habit: faking a dramatic, debilitating heart attack the very moment the waiter brought the bill. This wasn’t a desperate, one-off stunt; Aidas reportedly pulled this trick more than 20 times in a single year, turning local restaurants into his personal, free stage.
Aidas certainly knew how to live it up, even if he didn’t intend to pay for it. His routine was flawless: he would order the most luxurious items on the menu—lobster, premium whiskey, succulent seafood paella, and entrecôte steak. He’d savor every bite, enjoying the meal like royalty, meticulously setting the stage for his final act. The moment of truth—when the itemized bill was presented—was his cue. With impeccable, Oscar-worthy timing, Aidas would clutch his chest, gasp for breath, and collapse dramatically, turning a bustling restaurant floor into a scene of instantaneous panic.
At first, staff, understandably, rushed to call emergency services. But as Aidas became a persistent repeat performer across Alicante, the local police and restaurant owners quickly wised up. Staff soon stopped rushing to call an ambulance and started reaching for the phone to contact the police instead. His face was rapidly recognized by local officers, and owners began circulating his photo amongst themselves to warn each other before he could even walk through the door. Interestingly, the individual amounts he avoided paying were relatively small—usually between fifteen and seventy dollars. It was the sheer audacity and volume of his performances that cemented his status as an urban legend and a significant nuisance for the city’s hospitality industry.
Despite multiple arrests and even serving time behind bars, Aidas remained committed to his unique form of dining and often dashed out of jail only to repeat the trick. His prolific, dramatic career as Alicante’s most notorious dine-and-dasher was only recently put on permanent hold following his latest arrest. The bizarre case of Aidas J. serves as a strange, yet important, reminder for everyone in the service industry: sometimes, the greatest vigilance is needed not for complex scams, but for the most theatrical ones.
