`Beauty bandit' arrested at Miami restaurant

When Maria Elizabeth Chrysson was arrested at a Miami restaurant Monday night, she was concerned about the ``bad hair day'' she was having, police said.

And Chrysson, 29, of Miami Beach, was disappointed the news media were not at the Latin Café 2000, at 2501 Biscayne Blvd., to document her arrest on charges of stiffing a Miami cosmetic center after getting about $4,000 worth of treatments and cosmetic creams, police said.

``She likes the attention, apparently,'' Miami police spokesman Napier Velazquez said Tuesday.

Authorities say Chrysson received Botox and other cosmetic work at South Florida facilities over the past year and either bounced checks or walked out without paying.

The media nicknamed her the ``Beauty Bandit'' (also the ``Botox Bandit'') and she adopted the term herself, said Chrysson's lawyer, Daniel Lurvey. He said Chrysson was having money problems, but still planned to pay.

``We were in the process of making restitution when the arrest occurred,'' Lurvey said. ``We will continue to attempt to resolve the matter of the alleged victim.''

A Miami Beach facility that wasn't paid in December also has a pending court case against Chrysson, Lurvey said.

In the Miami case, she bounced checks in February and kept promising the Miami Institute for Age Management and Intervention that she would pay, but she never did, a police report said.

Chrysson was charged with three counts of grand theft and one count of scheming to defraud, all of them third-degree felonies.

``It seems foolish to steal this type of service,'' said Stephen Watson, co-founder of the Miami Institute.

Meanwhile, Fort Lauderdale police are investigating whether Chrysson was the woman who walked out of the Shino Bay Cosmetic Dermatology & Laser Institute on July 23 without paying a $3,300 bill.

She has not been charged in that case, Fort Lauderdale police said Tuesday.

At the Miami police station where she was taken Monday, Chrysson asked if she could access her Facebook account to see if people knew she had been arrested.

No access, police said.