The Arizona Republic

Amy’s owners may get show

Scottsdale couple said to be weighing reality-tv offers

- By Jennifer Mcclellan

It seems that the Bouzaglos’ 15 minutes aren’t up yet.

Entertainm­ent news website RadarOnlin­e.com reported that Amy and Salomon “Samy” Bouzaglo, husband-and-wife owners of Amy’s Baking Company in Scottsdale, are consid- ering offers from several production companies to appear on their own reality show.

The couple were catapulted into the spotlight after the May 10 airing of an episode of the reality TV show “Kitchen Nightmares” in which they were shown yelling expletives at customers, taking tips left for servers and refusing to take any criticism from the host, British chef Gordon Ramsay.

In a first for the show, Ramsay walked away before implementi­ng business practices, saying he had finally met “two owners who I could not help, and it wasn’t because I didn’t want to, it was because they are incapable of listening.”

The social-media outcry was immediate. Thousands of people from across the country took to Yelp, Facebook, Reddit and other websites to voice their disgust with the owners.

A social-media poster claiming to be the Bouzaglos retaliated, spewing obscenitie­s and vowing legal recourse. Buzzfeed called it “the most epic brand meltdown on Facebook ever.” Yahoo, Forbes, the Daily

Beast, E! Online and Huffington Post all had stories on the Bouzaglos, who claimed their website and all of their social-media accounts were hacked. Those claims are being investigat­ed by the Scottsdale Police Department.

Since the initial controvers­y, 12 News and have uncovered legal troubles involving the couple.

Samy Bouzaglos is facing deportatio­n; he served time in prison before im- migrating to the U.S. 13 years ago. In 2003, Amy Bouzaglos pleaded guilty to the misuse of a Social Security number after she applied for a $15,000 bank loan. Back then, her name was Amanda Bossingham — she married Samy Bouzaglo in January 2004. She entered prison in late 2008 and was released in October 2009.

“We both made mistakes in the past. We have done our time,” AmyBouzagl­os told on May 21. “We can’t comment. We know God is with us.”

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