Imagine a man who spends his life committing petty crimes with the goal of turning prison into his home. No violence, no resistance. In fact, this man always uses the same technique to end up arrested each time: stealing food from New York restaurants. It sounds like a plot worthy of Hollywood... but an article from The New York Times published in May 1994 assures that this person existed. His name? Gangaram Mahes, the “Serial Diner”.
The original article reveals part of the story of Gangaram Mahes. Originally from Guyana and raised in poverty, he came to the United States in 1976 at just 18 years old (he was 36 at the time of publication). The American dream quickly turned into a nightmare of recession, unemployment, and fuel shortages. Mahes found refuge in the Army, but was discharged after five years due to his problems with hashish.
He worked as a picker in Virginia and Florida under subhuman conditions, and returned to Guyana... only to come back to South Bronx with a wife who abandoned him. By the late '80s, the only constant in Mahes's life was jail, and he concluded that he was better off there. The strategy to get in turned out to be very simple: pretend to be a middle-class New Yorker, enter a restaurant, order a good meal... and not pay.
Gangaram Mahes: The “Serial Diner”
The restaurant had to be neither too expensive nor too cheap. In the first case, he risked not getting a table or facing greater legal pressure, while in the second they might forget the whole matter. The article reveals that Mahes committed the same crime at least 31 times, always pleading guilty and rejecting all negotiation offers. The last time, he had ordered a swordfish steak at the American Festival Cafe in Rockefeller Center (Google now reports it as “permanently closed”), for which he was serving a 90-day sentence at Rikers. Released on Thursday, arrested on Sunday.
And Mahes got exactly what he wanted each time: a tidy place, a place to sleep, clean clothes, and at least two meals a day. The New York Times took the trouble to analyze the cost of Mahes's “strategy”. $162 per day in taxes, about $14,580 for his 90-day “stay”... when the original bill was $51. All his defenders requested alternative sentences due to the serial profile of his acts, but prosecutors always refused, and Mahes accepted sentences ranging from 10 to 180 days. In the last case, prosecutors sought to lock him up for a year. His assigned lawyers tried to explore other options, but when the judge offered a reduced sentence of 90 days, Mahes took it without a second thought.
The story of Gangaram Mahes ends here, but I imagine his vacations at Rikers are no longer an option. Conditions at that jail have deteriorated notably (especially after the pandemic), and the city has already voted for its definitive closure in 2026.
(Editor's note: The original article is behind a paywall)
Source: The New York Times
