A 58-year-old man has become the bane of restauranteurs in the Dutch city of Delft after eating without paying at least 127 times in the last few years.

Earlier this month, police in Delft were called at a restaurant where a man was allegedly trying to skip out on the bill by faking a medical condition. According to Mike Hogeveen, the bartender at the unnamed restaurant, the man caught his attention when he started buying people rounds and offering to share his food with everyone, but he really became the center of attention when he started shaking his left arm uncontrollably as if he was having a stroke. Paramedics were summoned, but upon examining the man, they realized that he was faking and refused to take him to the hospital as he had requested.

Photo: Jay Wennington/Unsplash

Faced with the paramedics’ refusal to take the man in their ambulance, the restaurant owner approached the 58-year-old patron about the bill, but seeing as he had apparently just gone through a mild stroke, he proposed that they settle it at a later date. The patron agreed, but as he was giving the restauranteur his name and address, a paramedic intervened, claiming that he had given them a different name and address just moments earlier.

“He thought he could get out of the bill of more than a hundred euros ($108) by pretending to be a sick person,” Hogeveen said.

On the advice of the ambulance worker, the restaurant owner called the police. They checked his pockets for identification and upon checking his file at the station, they realized he was a “notorious food pirate” who had been terrorizing local restaurants for years. There were no less than 127 complaints against him for having eaten at restaurants without paying, but despite a civil suit against him, no one had been able to make him stop.

Photo: Kenny Eliason/Unsplash

It’s unclear whether the food pirate is still in custody, or if there is any way to make him pay the thousands of euros he owes to Delft restauranteurs. And because of personal privacy laws, other restaurant owners don’t even know the man’s name or what he looks like, so they can protect themselves against him.

We featured a similar story last year when a man faked a heart attack at about 20 restaurants in Spain’s Costa Blanca region so he could skip out on paying the bills. But with 127 offenses to his name, this Dutch food pirate has him beat!