'Privileged' scam artist conned Holiday Inn out of £13k in one evening at Scots hotel

dailyrecord.co.uk:

A "privileged" hotel guest conned a major chain out of more than £13,000 in an evening after mounting up gambling debts. Former private schoolboy and university graduate Dillon Anandarajan used a sophisticated scam to con the Holiday Inn Express in Perth.Anandarajan, 28, and Kevin Truong, 26, checked into the hotel to spend the night together on 13 October 2020.

Anandaran 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 - initially by putting an extra number on his payment amount so the hotel would be obliged to refund him.

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.