Hotel manager steals $150,000 in customer payments through fake refunds, feds say
A Missouri woman has been indicted after officials say she used her position as a hotel manager to steal $150,000 in fake refunds.
The 39-year-old woman was indicted in the U.S. District Court in St. Louis on Jan. 17, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri.
An attorney for the woman was not listed in court records.
Between March and October, the woman was working as an assistant manager at a hotel in Richmond Heights, a St. Louis suburb, prosecutors said.
While working, the woman went into the hotel’s computer system and altered customers’ reservations, officials said.
“(She) changed those reservations to falsely show that the customers had used the hotel’s loyalty rewards system ‘points’ to pay for their stay,” officials said.
By doing so, officials say the woman refunded the customers’ payments to her own credit and debit cards.
She collected about $153,518 in refunds, prosecutors said. On one occasion, on Oct. 4, she tried to refund herself an additional $62,000 while she was off-duty, according to court records.
She is charged with five counts of wire fraud and faces up to 20 years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each count if convicted.
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