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. These were designed to make Ms Hally leave the reception area unattended, at which point Anandarajan took the card terminal and issued further refunds to himself.
He admitted repeatedly taking the terminal and processing refunds which were not due to him. He made numerous illicit transactions throughout the evening until he had paid himself £13,500.
Truong, who had been present in the reception area at various times, had his not guilty plea to the same charge accepted by the Crown. It is understood they were charged after CCTV footage from the reception area was recovered and both men were identified as the hotel guests.
Sheriff Gillian Wade said: "This is quite a serious offence and you haven't had any convictions for a significant period of time, so I will need to obtain reports."
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