Conman scammed Scots hotel out of £13,000 using 'sophisticated' scheme

dailyrecord.co.uk:

A guest used a sophisticated scheme to con a major chain hotel out of more than £13,000 in a single night.Dillon Anandarajan, 28, and Kevin Truong, 26, checked into the Holiday Inn Express in Perth to spend the night together on 13 October 2020.

Anandarajan then carried out a scam throughout the evening which led to him transferring £13,500 in 'refunds' to his own credit card.He admitted attempting to obtain £13,500 by fraud from the hotel and sentence upon him was deferred for reports at Perth Sheriff Court.Anandarajan, from Greenwich, London, admitted pretending to hotel receptionist Lindsay Hally that he needed to use the card terminal to make a virtual payment.

Instead of entering the £75 price for the overnight stay, Anandarajan surreptitiously changed the figure to £175 and then pointed out that he had been accidentally overcharged.When the receptionist confirmed he had been charged too much, she carried out the refund process to send the extra £100 back to his card.

Anandarajan carefully watched what she was doing - including noting the special code number she entered to the machine to facilitate a card refund.During the remainder of the evening, he repeatedly attended at the reception with a series of requests for things that he required from the hotel.