New Netflix docuseries 'Don't Pick Up the Phone' delves into infamous McDonalds hoax calls

Netflix has debuted a three-part docuseries on a subject that will be familiar to many Kentuckians:

How a man pretending to be a police officer called up as many as 100 fast food restaurants in 32 states over 12 years and induced managers to strip search young employees on the grounds they had stolen money from customers or committed other crimes.

The Courier Journal first told that story in 2005 in one of the longest and most viewed articles it has ever published.  “A Hoax Most Cruel” told how the worst incident may have been at a McDonald’s in Mount Washington, where a 19-year-old, minimum-wage worker named Louise Ogborn was strip searched, sexually assaulted and humiliated for three hours before an off-duty custodian, a ninth-grade dropout, realized what had eluded the restaurant’s managers — that the call was a hoax.

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The story was later fictionalized in an episode of "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit" starring Robin Williams as the caller, and in a 2012 movie called “Compliance.”

Now, Netflix, in a series it calls “Don’t Pick up the Phone," revisits the tale, weaving together security video from the search of Ogborn and interviews with victims, police, lawyers and journalists.

The streaming service's documentary accurately reports how Ogborn and her lawyers took on McDonald’s and won a $6.1 million verdict against the world’s biggest fast food company, which it showed knew about two dozen similar incidents at its stores but failed to adequately warn and protect employees.

The series does not explore why so many managers went along with the hoax calls or the broader and frightening tendency of people to submit unquestionably to authority.

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But it tells the intriguing story of how a rookie detective on the Mount Washington police force, a colorful character named Buddy Stump, identified a private prison guard and wannabe police officer in the Florida panhandle as the alleged caller, and how Louisville lawyer Steve Romines got him acquitted.

“I thought we had an airtight case,” Stump says, recalling how a security video at Walmart seemed to show David R. Stewart had purchased calling cards used in the hoaxes.

Romines, who previously described his client as too dumb to have pulled off the scheme, told producers of the Netflix series, London-based Wag Entertainment, that the rest of the evidence against Stewart was inconsistent.

Stewart, who faced up to 15 years in prison, was acquitted on charges of falsely impersonating a police officer and soliciting sodomy.

The only person convicted in the bizarre hoax was Walter “Wes” Nix Jr., the fiance of an assistant manager who called him into the store from home to watch Ogborn so the manager could return to the counter. He was sentenced to five years in prison for forcing a sex offense he claimed to have committed on the orders of the caller.

Ann Oldfather, Ogborn's lead counsel, said neither she nor Ogborn participated in the series, although Oldfather said she has watched some of it.

"Steve Romines was the best lawyer of the lot of us," she said. "He pulled off a real miracle."

'DON'T PICK UP THE PHONE'

The series, which dropped on Dec. 14, can be watched on Nexflix or at https://www.netflix.com/title/81576846. A subscription is required.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Don't Pick Up the Phone: Netflix revisits hoax at Kentucky McDonald's