A Black celebrity chef is suing Wells Fargo Bank, alleging that employees at its metro Las Vegas branch falsely accused him of trying to cash a fraudulent check and then brusquely ordered him to leave the bank.
Shawn Davis — also known as “Chef Big Shake” since his fame as a food business entrepreneur took off after a 2011 appearance on the reality TV show “Shark Tank” — was in Las Vegas visiting family on July 11 and made an appointment to set up a business bank account so he could cash a $20,403 U.S. Treasury check from the IRS made out to his business.
After meeting with a Wells Fargo business advisor, David Parra, at the Henderson, Nevada branch for 30 minutes, and sharing with him a variety of business documents, Parra stepped away from his desk and went to a private area of the bank for about 15 minutes, according to the lawsuit filed in Clark County District Court on Aug. 20 and obtained by Atlanta Black Star.
When he returned, Parra said, “We can’t take this check,” told Davis it was “fake” and accused him of committing the crimes of fraud and forgery, Davis told Atlanta Black Star.
Parra didn’t ask Davis for any supporting information to confirm the U.S. Treasury check’s legitimacy, the complaint says, but spoke to him in a way that “conveyed the assumption that [Davis] could not rightfully have received such a check due to [his] African American race.”
Davis demanded to speak to the branch manager, Georgia Bell, who appeared and, he says, also talked to him dismissively, telling him she had confirmed the check was fraudulent through “a special back line” to the IRS at the bank.
As Davis insisted that they were wrong and asked to speak to someone at the IRS, Bell and Parra repeatedly interrupted him, raised their voices, and spoke over him, he claims.
“I can’t help you,” Bell allegedly said, loudly, in front of other customers and employees. “This is a fake check, and it’s forged, and I need you to leave the bank.”
“I said, ‘Ma’am, I hope you’re not doing what I think you’re doing,” Davis says. “I said, ‘I have given you an opportunity to clear this up. Don’t do this. You’re being racist towards me. You’re discriminating against me because of what I look like.’”
“’No, I would never do that,’ she said. ‘I’ll never do that,’” Davis recounted. “I said, ‘Well, you’re doing it right now. Can you not give an explanation?’ … I got ready to say, ‘Call the cops,’ but then I told myself, ‘You know that if the cops come in here, they’re going to take me to jail because she said I committed fraud. That’s not going to solve anything.’ So, I left.”
Davis says he drove his car down the block, parked, and then “became super-duper emotional, trying to understand what had just happened to me,” breaking down in tears.
A serial entrepreneur, Davis, 55, has run a series of restaurants and food businesses since he was a teen chef in Long Island, New York. Though the investors on “Shark Tank” didn’t bite on his shrimp burger business, others did, and he sold his food products in thousands of stores. He also opened a chain of Nashville hot chicken restaurants, bringing in $5 million in annual revenues at one point.
Davis has showed off his culinary skills in guest appearances on TV shows including Rachael Ray, Man vs. Food on the Travel Channel, CNN, and The Today Show, and has enjoyed being a minor celebrity chef. So it was jarring to be “treated like a criminal and ordered to leave” the bank, he said.
When he returned to his hometown of Tampa a week later, Davis, a longtime Wells Fargo customer, went to a bank branch there and opened a business account, depositing the U.S. Treasury check with no issue, he says.
Bank employees assured him the check was valid and told him that Wells Fargo has no direct line to the IRS. They also told him that in reviewing their system, the Nevada branch had not created a business account for him beyond entering his first and last name.
The Nevada Wells Fargo employees had taken the initiative to file and investigate a complaint on his behalf, without his knowledge, the lawsuit says. He learned on July 24 via email from the bank’s complaints management office that the matter was closed and they had determined that no wrongdoing had occurred at the Henderson branch by any employee.
“And that’s when I started getting angry, more than upset, that I was taken advantage of, that I needed to pursue legal action,” he said. “I feel assaulted mentally. I feel less than a person. … I feel like sh–, to be honest with you, that somebody would take it upon themselves to be the judge and the jury, because it felt like it that day, to not go through normal protocol, but to take it upon themselves to accuse me of a crime, with no basis for it, and to lie to my face while they did it.”
Davis has been undergoing therapy since the “hostile and discriminatory encounter” in the bank, the lawsuit says. The traumatic experience underscores “his anguish over the reality that his children and grandson may one day be subjected to the same degrading assumptions and treatment.”
“My grandson is two and a half years old,” Davis said. “I could not live with myself if I didn’t do anything before I left this earth to protect him in any kind of way, at least for people to understand what’s out there that this type of thing still exists. It needs to be dealt with. You know, you’re harming people. I have a reputation. I’ve done everything I thought I can do in life to be take the right direction and the right steps, to make the right moves, to become successful at what I was doing as an entrepreneur, and then to be halted, from someone who doesn’t know me and just looked at me and made a choice — it’s outrageous.”
The lawsuit accuses Wells Fargo, Parra, and other unnamed employees at the bank of racial discrimination by depriving him of equal enjoyment of services, facilities and privileges in a place of public accommodation, defamation, negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress, in violation of Nevada law.
He seeks a jury trial to determine general, special, punitive and exemplary damages of at least $50,000 to compensate him for violating his rights and for emotional distress, humiliation and reputational harm.
A corporate spokesperson for Wells Fargo National Association, the nation’s fourth-largest bank, declined to comment on the lawsuit. The bank and the other defendants in the case have 20 days to file a response to the complaint after they are served.
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