Nigerians stop credit card payment after hotel checkout

A group of Nigerian nationals stayed in a star hotel for four days and checked out after paying only half of the bill through a credit card fraud, according to a police complaint.

Tony Reid, Peter Prince and their friends checked into the hotel located in Halasuru, East Bengaluru, on July 28 and ran up a bill of Rs 8.23 lakh during their stay. The bill included room tariff and various other services.

The group paid the bill by credit card during the checkout. But minutes later, they are believed to have called up the bank and asked for stopping the payment. The credit card transaction was apparently carried out in the offline credit mode. The hotel received only Rs 4.13 lakh, and the bank remitted the rest to the credit cardholder.

The hotel couldn't detect the fraud immediately. It was only during an accounts audit that the matter came to light.

Kumaresan, a security manager at the hotel, subsequently lodged a complaint at the jurisdictional Bharathinagar police station. Police have opened a case of cheating under the IPC and other appropriate sections of the IT Act. They have identified the suspects from the CCTV footage of the hotel and are looking out for them.