PHOENIX — The restaurant's name is enough to turn heads.
But it's the owner's recent plea deal that's cooking up even more questions.
Breakfast Bitch, a restaurant at 3rd and Portland streets in downtown Phoenix, regularly draws crowds for it's atmosphere and unique name. It's been part of the Valley's brunch fabric since 2020 when it first opened in the Roosevelt Row area.
But soon after the restaurant opened, its owner, Tracii Hutsona, was arrested on federal fraud charges.
Hutsona was arrested in February 2021 on wire fraud and aggravated identity theft charges for allegedly stealing more than $1 million from actress Joumana Kidd, former NBA star Jason Kidd's ex-wife.
In documents filed in federal court, prosecutors accuse Hutsona of taking the money between 2015 and 2019 while she was working as an assistant for Kidd.
The documents detail that the money was set aside for the education of the victim's children, but accuse Hutsona of using it to fund her own luxurious lifestyle.
"This wasn’t just opening up a credit card in someone else’s name. She stole money from the kids’ college funds," said Julie Schwartz with private investigation firm T&M. "Joumana’s credit was ruined."
Schwartz said her team started looking at the case after Kidd's financial advisor noticed some red flags. She said her team had to go through financial records line by line to see if Kidd made each expense or if it might have been Hutsona.
"You see Tracii used the money to buy the licensing for her restaurant, to get the website, to rent her apartment," Schwartz shared.
According to the company website, Hutsona and her husband run a luxury lifestyle company in addition to running the Breakfast Bitch restaurants in Phoenix and San Diego.
This isn’t the first time Hutsona's been in hot water.
In 2008, records show she was convicted in an embezzlement scheme and was sentenced to more than six years in federal prison. She was released from prison on May 19, 2014, according to the Bureau of Prisons.
The U.S. Attorney's Office called her a "serial con artist" in the current case.
"Tracii presents as a wonderful person," Schwartz said. "She knows how to walk the walk, talk the talk. If Joumana did a little research she may have seen Tracii’s past."
Hutsona, who originally pleaded not guilty, took a plea deal in July 2022. She pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of New York. A court transcript shows she admitted to stealing from Kidd and told the judge she knew what she was doing was wrong.
Several emails requesting comment from Hutsona's attorney and the restaurant went unanswered.
Hutsona is facing up to 20 years in federal prison in this case. She's scheduled to be sentenced in November 2022.