A man walked into a five-star Indian hotel and booked a room for one night – then extended his stay by almost two years and allegedly skipped his roughly $70,700 bill when he left.
Accused fraudster Ankush Dutta booked a room for a single night at the swanky Roseate House hotel in Delhi on May 30, 2019, but stayed an extra 603 nights and left on Jan. 22, 2021, The Indian Express reported, citing a police complaint.
He allegedly left behind unpaid bills amounting to 5.8 million Indian rupees, or over $70,700, the newspaper reported.
Management accused the staff of helping Dutta turn Roseate House into a freebie extended-stay hotel.
Employees “forged, deleted, added and falsified a large number of entries” in the guest’s account, The Indian Express.
“The accounts were falsified to conceal the actual outstanding dues from the senior management to avoid detection of their willful illegal acts,” the hotel reportedly said in the complaint.
One of the hotel staffers was identified as Prem Prakash, a front desk manager, who is suspected of criminal conspiracy, forgery and cheating, according to the news outlet, which cited police.
“We believe Prakash forged the records. He even removed Dutta’s names from daily reports where his hotel bills were stated,” a senior police official told The Indian Express.
The manager allegedly used his credentials to log into the system and change the data.
“The scrutiny of record of the alleged officials of the hotel revealed that they created several fake and false pending bills to benefit Dutta by adopting various ways like removing room nights from his bills, transferring his debits into the bills of other guests’ bills, using settled bills of other guests by incorporating his name in the bill, etc,” the complaint states, according to the report.
No arrests have been made and a police investigation into Dutta and the staff is underway, The Indian Express said. Owned by India’s Bird Hospitality and opened in 2016, , the 216-room Roseate House features several restaurants and a luxury spa.