Before booking a hotel room, we all look for good deals on various booking sites and choose the best ones. TBH, thoughts of free deals do cross our minds. But thoughts of conning a hotel never crossed our minds. But it did for this guy.
Hailing from Ratnagiri, Shoaib Modak alias Siraj Modak, conned three five-star hotels near Mumbai’s domestic and international airports and fled without paying bills of approximately of ₹1.38 lakh.
But it was in his fourth attempt on Tuesday that he got caught and arrested.
Modak reached a Mumbai hotel on September 29 and asked a room for three days. When it came to the talks of payment, he showed a fake message on his phone which stated that ₹38,000 was transferred to their account. The unsuspicious staff believed him, and let him check into the room.
Modak, on October 2, told the staff that he wished to extend his stay. Upon being asked for additional payment for the extended stay, Modak said that he would fetch the ATM card from the room. But he fled.
It was then that the hotel staff got suspicious and they checked the bank account only to find that the money was never transferred. The bills for this particular stay amounted to ₹60,000
The hotel upon being scammed informed others hotels in the city. By then, Modak had checked into another five-star hotel in Mumbai. But since they were already aware of his duping other hotels, they got him thrown into jail, the very day he checked in.
According to a Hindustan Times report, an officer from Sahar police station said,
“Modak has been booked under IPC sections 420 (cheating), 504 (intentional insult with intent to provoke breach of peace) and 506 (criminal intimidiation) of IPC. He has been remanded in police custody until October 13.”
Modak confessed to the crimes during questioning and revealed that he has done that to two other hotels. The total amount is not yet revealed but it is approximately over ₹1.38 lakh.
This is the kind of stuff you see in movies. And, duping someone has become so easy these days. With awareness, we think people can be more cautious before falling victims to such conning.