Jakarta –
A five-star hotel guest in India stayed for 603 days or nearly two years and check out without paying a penny. This incident caused the hotel to lose more than 5.8 million rupees or the equivalent of Rp. 1.06 billion (exchange rate of Rp. 183/rupee).
Quoted from The Indian Express, Saturday (1/7/2023), the Roseate House Hotel Management reported this man named Ankush Dutta to the police. This man has check in or staying since May 30, 2019.
Dutta initially only planned to stay for one night at the hotel in the Aerocity Delhi area. But the next day, he extended his stay by 603 days.
“Dutta check in at the hotel on 30 May 2019. He was supposed to leave the next day but extended his stay anyway. He finally left on January 22, 2021 without paying the bill,” the police said.
Because of this incident, the police also conducted a series of investigations. The police suspect that Dutta falsified the account used to check in to avoid tracking down his real identity.
In addition, the hotel management also had suspicions about some of the staff. A number of employees were suspected of conspiracy, forgery and fraud. One of them is the Head of Hotel Front Office Department, Prem Prakash, who is responsible for managing customer accounts and bills.
“Hotel staff allegedly falsified, deleted, added and falsified a large number of entries in the guest’s account in the hotel’s Opera software system,” read the FIR (first information report) filed in a complaint by the hotel board.
“The accounts were falsified to hide actual arrears from senior management to avoid detection of intentional illegal acts,” the report continued.
Although no arrests have been made yet, police say an investigation is underway against Dutta, Prem Prakash and other staff. Prakash himself has been charged with criminal conspiracy, forgery and fraud.
“Police suspect Prakash used his credentials to log into the system and change the records. It was found that Dutta was charged 0 rupees for at least 52 nights,” the police said.
According to hotel rules, if a guest owes more than 50,000 rupees to the hotel, the staff must notify senior management and ask the guest to pay. However, this step was not taken in Dutta’s case. Because of this, Prakash allegedly falsified records, even removing Dutta’s name from the daily reports that mentioned his hotel bills.
“The motive behind the massive fraud and counterfeiting of Dutta’s accounts was to siphon cash payments made by him,” the FIR read.
Police added that hotel records also show that Dutta was moved from room to room but his hotel stay was reduced by 308 nights to make his bill appear lower. Dutta also provided fake receipts and checks ranging from 700 thousand rupees to 1 million rupees, which were non-cashable.
(fdl/fdl)
2023-07-01 15:00:08
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