Welcome back to Tales from the Service Industry. I'm your host, I'm Bill. I'm joined tonight
with Liz. She's joining us again. Hi team. And we have the great fortune of being joined
by Andy. Fortune or misfortune, maybe it just depends. We'll see how it goes. No, it's definitively
fortune. Andy, thank you for being here. We do ask when a new guest joins us to just share
a little bit about themselves to kind of bookmark how our stories are going to go for the night.
It feels like I'm like one of those walkers. Hi everyone. I'm Andy. Hi Andy. Can I give
you your favorite ice cream flavor? Right? Yeah. I like long walks in the beach and puppies.
So I spent 20 years in a service industry, not the one you're probably thinking of. I
spent 20 years in law enforcement in Southern California for a major metropolitan city that
services a large, how do we say it, business and hospitality sector would be a good way
to put that. So I was assigned to an area that dealt with nothing but businesses, hotels,
service industry related type things. So yeah, I have some stories from probably the other
side of the service industry and we might get a few police stories sprinkled in there
as well. Just for flavor. Just for flavor. Spice. Yeah, a little spice, but yeah. And
Bill and I had the fortune or unfortunate, depending how you look at it, I thought it
was a fortune. Absolutely good fortune. So cute. Total bromance man. Yeah. To work together
for quite a while. I was a frequent flyer at his establishment and some of these stories
we share jointly and some he's only heard about. And so we might get some more details
and flavors of some stories tonight. Yes, absolutely. The thing that I love about all
of these stories though, is that most of us listening will hear them and say that absolutely
didn't happen. But one of, well, I shouldn't say one of my favorite stories, but top five
of our shared stories actually occurred. There's going to be a dirty wind up, but occurred
in a lobby bathroom at the hotel that I was working at. And I got the good fortune of
being present to see this. So there was witnesses. Yes. Well, keep in mind witnesses. The number
will surprise you. Yes. Oh my gosh. That already made me nervous. No, actually, you know what?
The theme of the number will surprise you would apply to multiple stories that we share.
So we'll just make that, you know what? That'll probably be the theme for the night. Okay.
I like that. Surprise you. The number will surprise you. Yeah. So, but yeah, if you would,
let's kick this off with that lobby bathroom story. Yeah. Let's set it up. So this was
a, uh, how do we say unhoused person? We'll use the term gentlemen loosely with him. Um,
wise choice. Um, and this was a guy we'd been dealing with for a few weeks in the area and
he was for lack of better terms, terrorizing local businesses. So whether there's a nearby
grocery store, obviously the hotels, there was a, um, business district, fast food chains.
There's a number of things in this area and he was systematically going stealing, being
angry with customers, you know, ticking people off, um, drinking in public going in, he'd
drink and then pass out in hotel lobbies and in the middle of the street. And he was just
causing a general ruckus, but he was very elusive. So we get, you know, the public would
call and say, Hey, this guy's here. And after a while we get to know the description. He'd
always somehow managed to vanish. And so probably about three or four days before the story,
we finally catch up to him in front of Bill's old hotel. And I very politely read him the
right act of you can't be here. There's going to be trespassing. He has all these laws that
you're breaking. And I'm sure in a very reasonable, uh, inarticulate manner, he was like, Oh, absolutely
officer. You will never see me again. That would be a big lie. Fast forward 48 hours.
Yeah. So when we fast forward bill calls and he's like, Hey, guess who's here? And you
automatically knew. I was like, Oh no, really man? Like, okay. And it's like 9 AM maybe
ish probably, probably earlier. Yeah. I'll put it to you this way. I usually go through
at the time I was going through two like large coffees in the morning and I wasn't through
my first one yet. So it gives you about how early this was. And so I'm like, Oh, all right.
Go cruising on over there. And I come in, I go, where is he? And bill just points to
the, to the restroom in the lobby. And I was like, okay. So we go bebop and in there, but
that's all the warning you give him just a he's over there. So unfortunately there were
many times that Andy would be at the hotel for one reason or another fairly early in
the day and then still be there a couple hours later for yet the next call. We would share
a lot of those and some of the calls and texts that would go back and forth about who and
what it was like to you, the observer would be vague to him. It's like, Oh, he deals with
me. All right, let's, let's make this happen. Well, you know, I think I don't know how many
times I unofficially deputized you because for lack of a better terms, bill had this
great like cop mentality. He could pick up the fact that self was going wrong, like crooked
and how he always had like this sixth sense of like, they're up to no good, like citizens
arrest type. No, like being aware of my surroundings. Yeah. He could pick up on like, yep, they're
up to no good. We didn't know what they were up to no good about, but he knew there was
something funky. What was Shakespeare? There's something rotten in the state of Denmark,
right? It's like, you don't know what it is. You just know that two plus two is equaling
five and that ain't right. Right. And that's kind of the theme of a lot of our stories
was just there's these little things that say something. Yeah. Sometimes it's passive
time. Sometimes it's real obvious in your face, but it always led to something that
just didn't smell right. Well, when it comes to like keeping your guests safe, you might
as well just made the call. Even if you're wrong, that happened more than once. I'm not
going to lie. There were, there were more than one call that was referred off to Andy
based on the fact of hotel safety or there's something really amiss here that ended with
weapons drawn and handcuffs coming out. No way. Oh yeah. I actually almost got killed
in his parking lot. Yes. Save that story. Let's, let's get through the bathroom one
first. We can finish our current story. So that's a great one though. So it's nine AM.
You're not even through with one coffee yet. He points to the bathroom. He's over there.
Yup. And I might've been a little grumpy cause I wasn't through my entire coffee and I might
have been grumpy. The fact that he was back again after less than 48 hours later. So anyhow,
we go trucking on in the bathroom and I look, kind of look down to see where he is and I
can see his feet in the larger kind of handicapped accessible stall. I turn, I look at him. I'm
like, I'll be right back. So I go walking in there and I go to push the door open and
my gosh, it was locked. Who would have thought? I know. However, nothing that a boot couldn't
fix. So we solved that problem real quick. In we go. Just kicked the door. Yeah. All
right. Access was gained. Yep. And, uh, not really to my surprise or probably bill surprised.
He's in there drinking. Oh, well of course. A lot vodka. Now, now let me, it's somewhere
south of nine AM. So it's early. Yeah. And it was kind of like, um, if you could imagine
you've had a really hard day at work and you're, you're soaking in the bathtub and you have,
you know, a bunch of candles lit up next to there and you're really setting the scene
and you're just really relaxing. He's sitting on the toilet. It closed. He wasn't going
to the bathroom. Oh yeah. Well he had his vodka in hand, but he had just like, you would
have candles lining your bathtub. He had beer cans lining the half wall that he had stolen
just recently cause they were still cold along the side. So he was, once he was done with
the vodka, he was going to systematically go down the wall of all the beers. So the
vodka was the appetizer. Yeah. And the beer was the main course. Apparently. Well, more
carbs, you know? Yeah. And he had them all lined up. Yeah. Yeah. Like on the railing,
all nice and pretty and organized. Yeah. Labels facing front and everything. Oh yeah. Yeah.
He was, he, he enjoyed his beverages. I'm just trying to paint a picture. Yeah. Yeah.
I look and I'm like, we're not having any more of this. I'm done. Now please keep in
mind 48 hours prior, Andy was nice cop. Yeah. He was firm. He was matter of fact, he was
very clear in what he said, but he was, he was polite. He was professional cordial. Maybe
unfortunately, as Andy had mentioned, Andy wasn't through his first cup of coffee. Nice.
He failed to show up that day. Oh, for sure. You got grumpy, uncaffeinated. Yeah. He called
him sick that day. So I had about had it at this point. And there was a monologue that
occurred that was getting my point across and very clear that it is time to go. Go ahead
and share the colorful vernacular that was shared that day. Well, it's so as, as I walk
in, I look and I know who it is. And I believe the first words out of the uncaffinated mouth
was, Hey, you mother effer, open the effin door now. You mother clucker. To which I think
he responded in a similar vernacular, which did not help the situation. Something about
copulating your mother. Yes. At which point the boot was then extracted in order to force
entry into the door. And it did not go very well there afterwards. So after about a three
to four minute monologue of sorts, and finding a reason to arrest said person, we found a
few penal code violations that he needed to go to see the justice of the peace about handcuffs
go on and we start to walk out of the bathroom. Now, before you say to yourself, why is this
story funny? You have to understand that this whole time that we are in this bathroom, the
entire exchange, the deployment of the boot key to the door, we were under the impression
that we were the only three people in that restroom. No, was there someone in another
lock stall? And as we are leaving, you hear a little toilet flush. Now, you both just
stop and look at each other. What the F I wish we would have had a camera or something
to look at the look. I'm actually not all three of our faces because the bad guy was
also like, when we had walked in there, I had looked down to see what's because there's
only two stalls. There's the accessible stall and there was like a normal version. And I
had looked underneath to see which of the two he was in. And I only saw one set of feet.
So did someone come behind you? No. So when Andy gave his opening speech, the occupant
of the smaller stall apparently knew that stuff was about to go down. So they wanted
to hear the T and their feet went up. Yeah. We didn't notice that. I think a few things
got sucked up real tight. Pucker factor. Absolutely. Hi. Yeah. Cause bill was behind me to ensure
that there was no accessories to the crime that may try to come in. And it was one of
those times we looked and we just walked out. I don't think, I don't think either one of
us ever saw who later walked out of that restroom. No, they stayed for quite a while. But into
bill's point, you have to imagine. So picture yourself, you're, you're on vacation with
your family. Your kids are out having breakfast. You don't want to go use the toilet in the
bathroom because maybe your wife doesn't appreciate the stink. Right? There's things that are
going on. We can all respect the lobby toilet. Go down to the lobby, right? And do the right
thing. And then you have this guy come in and you hear him just him and Han. And then
you see the backpack. He's all these beers going everywhere. You can hear him setting
the beer cans metal and metal on the railing. And you're like, what is this guy? Then you
start thinking, what hotel am I staying at? What kind of place did I check my family into?
Followed by, Hey mother ever. I told you never to come back. And you're like, Oh, it just
got real. And then you clinch. And again, this guy has no clue who we are. Right? Cause
it's not, Oh, you can be just anybody. He couldn't see the uniform. He couldn't see any of that.
So he's got no clue who's in there. What do you think he's like looking in the crack of
the door and being like, is this, I don't think any cracks were big. Oh, that poor guy.
And that's, that's like a little microcosm. I think of our entire relationship during
hotels was just nothing ever went according to plan. No. And they only went worse. I mean,
the hotel was in a fine part of the town. It's just that the town wasn't all that fine.
Like, you know, there was one day that I came into work. It's like seven o'clock in the
morning. I pull into the parking lot and there are nine, nine police cars in my parking lot.
And you're like, Oh, good morning. And it's like, Oh, okay. What, what is going on now?
I walked into the lobby. The front desk agent looks at me. I handed her my backpack. I said,
Oh, that's a good room. She's like five 16. Great. That was the total exchange. You're
not going to sit down and like get comfy. You're going to go assess the situation. Right.
But I mean, like that's, I mean, she knew exactly what I was talking about. Walk up
there and knock on the door. I don't remember what his name is, but one of the sergeants
that was always on that beat was there and he opens the door and he looks at me and he's
like, Oh God, you're gonna love this one. Apparently the guests that had been in the
room had been dealing heroin and had sold heroin to someone. But what they sold that
person was not heroin. Apparently it was like three or four pieces of dog kibble and wrapped
in aluminum foil. Now you're going to sit here and say, well, okay, wait, how do we
get from somebody selling dog food to you walking into a room with nine cops? Yeah.
And that would come back to the fact that the person that bought said kibble felt that
they had been ripped off and done wrong. And the only thing they could do is call nine
one one. Are you kidding? Not at all. Not at all. This person in the right mind. I'm
going to call the cops on you. Oh look, you're buying heroin from a hotel at five. I mean,
yeah, you're not, you're not in the right mind. Yeah. So dispatch did what any dispatch
would do and they sent officers to go investigate. Right. Yeah. So these people, they basically
have been dealing heroin out of the hotel. They were identity thieves. They were counterfeiters.
They were, they were, you name it. They did it. Their rap sheet had to have been a mile
long. That's standard issue hotel crook, right? Cause in hotels, it's not ever, Oh, I just
sell drugs or Oh, I just credit card fraud. It's like the, it's like the variety pack.
It's one chapter in their book. They have a diversified portfolio. Yeah. Multiple revenue
streams. I mean, God, and we dealt with that time. And again, you came in and did a credit
card fraud and like identity theft seminar. Yeah. The absolute best people to train on
credit card fraud and identity theft are your front desk agents, of course, because they're
dealing with it, but your housekeepers, because your housekeepers are in the rooms. Okay.
So you train your housekeepers to recognize what an encoder strip looks like. And you
tell them, if you see this, this is illegal. This should never be in a room. You call.
If you call me and this is actually what it is, you get a bonus. Okay. But I don't know
what that device is. Well, that's why you train a consultant like Andy to come in and
train your team. But for the people listening, it's a device that, so the mag strip encoders
are typically kind of, well, they used to be longer. They're, they're down to the point
where they're like an inch and a half long. And you swipe a credit card or anything that's
magnetically encoded through it and it records it and it holds it. And then you got to re-encode.
So, so, and then you get another credit card, swipe it. And then you put it's essentially
copied. Correct. So it's a CD burner effectively. Yeah. So, you know, when you go to use it,
it's a credit card. It's got the numbers on it. It's got a name embossed on it, but the
number doesn't match. The number of boss does not match the number encoded. Wow. So you're
training housekeepers to recognize this device. And what will happen, they'll come in and
they'll have, you know, back in the, when I first started, they had the re-embossing
machine. So they would actually, you could emboss the name on the front of the card.
So you could re-emboss a card with your name and the other person's number. People get
so creative. And then, you know, then you have the re-encoders. I said, they used to
be kind of big and clear. They look like the old, like the brick cell phones. They were
about that size. The old big, huge cell phones. And then now they're small. And the way the
crooks will do it, cause they're, Oh, well there's EVM chips and there's tap to this
and everything else. Well, what you do is you go, Oh yeah, my card hasn't been working
here. Let me just swipe it. The chip hasn't really been working. Yep. And you swipe it.
And then that goes through because it's got your credit card number and information on
a card that is not what it belongs on. Right? So you can, you can manipulate this stuff,
but they always leave it out in the open. So when you train the housekeepers, they can
go and they see you on embossing machine and re-encoder printers, a check washing. That
was real big acetone and the big dishes that they would wash checks on all the, so we train
them on paraphernalia that they're looking for in the room and like, Hmm, because while
they're out committing fraud or dope or whatever they're doing, then we know.
Okay. Yeah. Then we can, Oh, okay. Hey, this is in the room. We've, I don't know if it
might've been your hotel. A few times we would go, we get a warrant and then we lay in wait
in the room. So we'd like hide in the closet and like wait for them to come back and they
come in from crime and whatever. And ta-da cops are here. You're all under arrest. So
we would, you know, we'd catch some of these folks by just having, you know, guys like
bill at the front, picking up on something, housekeepers reporting something front desk.
That's how I almost got killed in the hotel. People calling nine one one, which is how
we led into the rather large party in one of the rooms. I mean, the way that information
comes in, it would blow your mind. I'm impressed. Okay. So back to your kibble. Yeah. So I mean,
the kibble one was I come in in the morning, there's nine cops in my parking lot, right?
That these people called on themselves. Well, no, no, no. The person that they sold the
dog kibble to call the police. So, you know, the cops show up to arrest them for, you know,
distribution of heroin and they find that there is a credit card theft that's going
on in the room. They found, I don't even know how many bags of brand new clothing, shoes,
et cetera, that still had the security tags on them, price tags on them. So they hit the
treasure trove of additional charges, you know, and it's like there was, there were
Ross bags, there was the rack, there was like all these different shopping bags that had
clothing in it with the related tags. So it's like, okay, well, that's one count. That's
two counts. Oh, all the different stores, every store they hit. Yeah. So what they'll
do is they'll go buy it with a bogus credit card. And well, if it works, they go again,
different store. Right. But the way they convert that in the money is they'll buy it all. And
then they go return it for a gift card or cash. Yeah. And then now you have hard cash
in through bogus credit cards out, or they'll try to sell it on, you know, whatever some
online platform, but usually they'll try to return it. When they go to return the charge,
the card will bounce back is no good. And they're like, Oh, I had fraud on that card.
I had to get a gift card or can just like, can you give me cash for it instead? And so
that's how they would exchange whole system. So did they get charged for heroin? You know,
they got charged for all of it. They got actually sell heroin. No, but they were in possession
of so they were in the intent to. So as the cops were going through the room, they were
looking for all of that stuff. Now here's the other thing that was crazy is that these
people had checked in the day before and there was so much stuff in the room. It would have
probably been like 20 bell carts worth of stuff. Oh my gosh. And reviewing the security
cameras when they checked in, there were six people that checked in. There was one bell
cart. So they did it all in a day. They did it all in a day. Separate and conquer, man.
So over, you know, they checked in at like three o'clock in the afternoon. Did they have
six different people in like, in like a 10 hour period, they filled the room with stuff.
The cops walked out of there with, I don't even remember how much heroin, but they took
away a whole bunch of loaded syringes. They left the other stuff. We counted 36 used syringes
in that one room alone. And that was a day. Well, no, they, I mean, they checked in around
three o'clock and this, the whole thing started to go down around five and I showed up at
seven. So, you know, we're, we're not even talking what, 14 hours, 15, 16 hours. The,
the most ironic part of it though, is that one of the, one of the girls that got arrested
was wearing a pair of shoes that she had written on the toes. Oh, the places all go like the
Dr. Seuss line. Unfortunately, it's going to be to jail and everything in the room that
was theirs, we were ordered to discard. Just throw it away. Yeah. The Sergeant was like,
all of this needs to be bagged and disposed of. None of it goes into loss and found none
of it stays. It goes. Well, it's stolen property. Yeah. Well, yeah, but I mean, like we, I mean,
we had to handpick through every single thing to ensure there were no sharps because of
how many we found and we found loaded rigs in with the cops had missed. They're so high
though. I mean, they stashed it everywhere. Sometimes they'll, they'll put them in like
pants pockets, jacket pockets outwards as a booby trap for the cops or like as an ambush.
So like, if they know they're going to get searched that the cops get pricked with the
needle and then who knows whatever's on the end of that thing. I worked with the guys
that have gotten pricked that came down with all kinds of nasty viral nonsense. One of
them, the prick got infected and it permanently scarred his finger in a, like a C shape. So
he couldn't straighten it. Couldn't straighten it. So he was permanently disabled because
of the infection that happened. I mean, there's just all kinds of things when it comes to
like these rooms and credit cards because where there's credit cards, there's dope or
there's dope. There's usually guns and weapons. I mean, there's all kinds of things that start
to, it just is like a spiraling effect. Yeah. You have multiple streams of income. Yeah.
So every single person in that room went to jail. I mean, the amount of, yeah, the amount
of loss for all the stores, the amount of time, the amount of labor and everything else
that the hotel had to deal with. It was like a good go. Just get out. And what I would
do when I was on those calls, I always go down and I'd tell, you know, whoever it was
hard charge this room right now. Cause what happens is you put the card down and they
preauthorize well, even if the card's been reported as fraudulent or anything other than
essentially canceled or as a bogus card number, a preauthorization will usually go through
finally. It's just checking to make sure that, okay, the number is good. It's actually with
the correct banking institution, everything seems on the up and up. And crooks kind of
know that. So they will check in for one day. If the card works, they will extend for one
more day. Cause they don't have to go back down. Well, not only that, but they don't
know how much money or how long this card's going to last for. So it's just some reports
that it's stolen. So they'll extend the day and extend the day and extend. They'll keep
extending. Some hotels won't actually hard charge that room. They'll just add another
preauthorization and another preauthorization. So they'll get the three or four or five days
or a certain dollar threshold, let's say a thousand dollars. Then they'll hard charge
it and then bing, it'll bounce back as fraudulent, closed account, whatever it is. Now they're
out a thousand dollars or whatever the case is. And these crooks have been there a week.
Yup. You do and who knows what. And so every time I catch them, I like hard charge it right
now because if it comes back, bounced fraudulent, now I have a crime. Now I can, now I at least,
I have enough reasonable suspicion to get into that room. And you don't have to worry
about certain things like warrants and other things. There's some legal things that as
soon as you're not supposed to be in there, some of these protections are relieved from
you. So there's some legalities to get in there, but the further and further they would
go, I'm like, you're just incurring more and more loss to the hotel, which was for me,
I can now charge it. I have more charges because of the higher amount, but it's more issues
for the hotel. It's more recost, it's more recovery, it's more complaints. Some of the
hotels have that zero tolerance, 100% satisfaction guarantee. You don't like something, you're
going to get your stay for free or whatever. So now you have all these crooks that are
causing not only whatever loss they're incurring, but now all the other rooms that they do a
service recovery on because they're complaining of loud parties, the smell of drugs down the
hallway. Who knows what's going on, right? And who knows what you're going to find in
that room and what you're going to have to repair, redo, how long it's going to be out
of service. There was one room, they'd been there for, I think three nights. What tipped
them off was they ordered the entire left side of the room service menu. Just that whole
page. Yeah. They ordered the entire page. So I was like, I don't know about this one.
It's kind of odd. So it took them a little while to call. So they eventually called.
Well, by the time we got there, when they obviously, when their food didn't show up,
they split, they were gone. However, when we walked in the room, there was absolutely
nothing left. The whole room was empty. The entire room was cleared out. The bed, the
bed frame. And I'll tell you this and anything they couldn't get out. So like, you know,
cause a TV, something fixed to the wall. Yeah. They took off the fixtures of the dresser
and the bureaus that they couldn't get off. So they took even the hardware fixtures off
like the drawers. They took the shower, the drawer pole. They took anything that literally
was not glued to a wall or anything else was gone. And no one said anything. No one saw
anything. Gone. Oh man. Those people are moving a mattress to their car. Weird. Just don't
say anything. Yeah. Everything was gone. Oh, that mini fridge. It must've brought it with
them. Nothing. Yeah. Man. Train your employees. If you see something, say something, man.
It's weird though. I mean, there are times like, I mean, we had coin exchanger or dollar
exchanger, dollar ring, four quarters out kind of a thing for our guest laundry. And
somehow it went missing. The whole thing. I'm sorry. This is all so bizarre. It had
been bolted to the floor and it was in a room that was under a lock. You had to have a guest
key to access the guest laundry. And in that guest laundry was the exchange, the coin machine
bolted down and there you are. Came in one day and it was gone. Called the vendor. Why
did you pull your machine? We didn't. Then we got a problem. Cause it ain't good. Well,
that's not the only thing. ATM machines would walk out all the time, all the time. I couldn't,
actually in six years I took three reports of ATMs that gone. The whole thing, the whole
machine gone. In fact, we had a guy, speaking of your, the coins, we had a guy that he,
I mean, he had figured this thing out. People think crooks are dumb. They're not dumb. They
just apply themselves in illegal manner. Right? A lot of them are very intelligent. So this
guy, brilliant, he goes, he, he starts a legitimate LLC as a coin laundry operator. Hey, I own,
I'm a management firm for coin laundry things. So I do the exchange. I do, I operate coin
thing. Right? So then what he did, he'd figured out how to drill out the coin machine. So
like the exchange machines, you know, Coke, Pepsi, you know, whatever the vending machines
are, the snack machines, anything that took either dollars or coins. This is kind of before
you had the credit card readers on it. So it was all cash and carry. So he would go
and he had a business account with a big national chain. So anywhere he traveled, there's a
bank nearby. He would go in and he'd find an area of like five or six hotels or, you
know, a place that had quite a bit. He would check in and over the course of like three
nights he would hit every single hotel for all their coins or their dollars, everything.
And just clean them out. Clean them out. And then he would go to the bank and deposit them
as part of his business into the LLC's bank account. Yes. So he's, I mean, paying taxes
on it. I mean, but he was a triple star platinum diamond member of every hotel chain, right?
Every single one of their top elite, whatever point thing you had, he was top elite, which
meant he had also figured out they're not going to touch you. No one's ever going to
suspect that you're a triple elite hundred plus night member if you're a crook. So he
would check in upgrades. I mean, this guy was living with a king. But was he writing
off these expenses to the business? Heck yeah, he was. So he was actually paying legitimately
for the hotel rooms. He was putting on a business credit card. Yeah. I mean, so the hotel was
not out any money on the consumer end. Right. They were out the back end with all their
vending machines if they owned them. All of them. Yeah. And this went on for over a decade.
Like this guy had gone, he traveled the world. He went all over, all over the country doing
this and he came into town. I think he hit your old hotel. He hit like two or three of
the hotels around. The way that he was doing it was kind of unique. We had seen the same
type of thing like a couple of years prior. God, this guy's back. We could never figure
out who this guy was. We could never find him. We had no pictures of him. We had, he
wore gloves. We had no fingerprints. We had nothing. One hotel randomly caught on camera
the backside of him walking down the hallway away. His goof was that he wore a pair of
shorts and he had a tattoo on the back of his calf. Right. And so, you know, we didn't
know for sure. It was about the right area, about the right time. You know, it was like,
it was very circumstantial and I'm like, great. I got, so we have a tattoo, right? So I'm
running every system possible for this tattoo. Right. And I can't find a thing. There's nothing.
So we have a tattoo, but that's it. My old boss has a photographic memory. I happen to
be working this thing. He walks in the office. He looks at the picture. He's like, Oh, that's
so and so. Like, I know that guy. I'm like, what, huh? What are you talking about? He's
like, Oh yeah, that's so and so. 12 years ago, I worked a case that, that, that, that,
that, that, that, and he started rattling off. He's like, I know that tattoo. So I bring
up his booking photo from the previous one and he's like, Oh yeah, that's him. I'm like,
you've got to be kidding me. He's like, Oh no, that, yep, that's him. So now I have a
name. So now I start going to every front desk. His, this guy here. Sure enough, he
pops up at the biggest, most expensive hotel we have in town. Wow. No, like, Oh, what,
Oh, like he's a big member. This, this, this, this, what's going on? I don't. Yeah. He's
like a triple tier elite platinum. I can't call him out on this. Oh no. I don't. Oh,
goodness me. No. I'm like, I'm pretty sure he's a crook. No, no, no, no, no. He's spent
tens of thousands of dollars. He's on a VIP list. He's a frequent stayer, all this jazz.
At least we knew where he was. So we ended up setting up a surveillance that night. Sure
enough. Go to the laundry room or vending machine, whatever. Nailed him. Yep. We got
him. First time he'd been caught over a decade. This guy was living on everybody else's literally
everyone else's dime. Change. Yeah. Change. Wow. Ever. We had a couple of stories like
that. There was this guy that would come in periodically. The first time he stayed with
us, he came in late, checks out early. The certificate that he had booked the room on
kicks back as invalid. Now guys at platinum level guests. So we just write it off, right?
He comes back in again, stays another night, same sort of parameters, same exact thing
happens. Kicks back as invalid. Weird. So I'd go to my boss, tell him, Hey, look, this
is the second time this guy's been here. Yeah, this has happened. I said, I don't care if
he's a platinum. This guy needs to be reported. My boss says, no, he's top tier. They're too
valuable. We need them. Yeah. So at that point I said, okay, I get it. And you did you do
it anyway? I did it anyway. So I contacted the rewards department. I lodged a complaint.
Customer service person has done this to us now for the second time. I said, is it or
is it not unreasonable to anticipate that all of our guests, including a top tier rewards
member would settle their charges? Customer service person says, absolutely. Great. Thank
you. Thank you so much. And that's it. Hang up with them and I go about my day. I can't
remember the timeframe. I want to say it was about two weeks later. I get a phone call
from a woman who's an AGM at a hotel about an hour away from here. She says to me, Hey,
has a guest by the name of such and such stayed with you before? I said, yes, he has. She
says, did he check in on a certificate that didn't have points? I said, yes, he did. She
says, he's here at this beach city. There's some police action going on and I just needed
to confirm that this had happened. And I said, well, yeah, I did. I said, how, how did you
know to contact me? And she said, oh, well, I contacted the customer service line and
they shared with me that you had shared that with them. Ah, okay. So I text Andy here,
said, Hey, remember such and such? He's like, Oh yeah, that a hole. Like, yep. They're at
this hotel. I gave him a quick rundown on what was going on. He's like, I'll be right
there. So he comes over. We call the, uh, the hotel and he gets on the phone with one
of the cops. Turns out that this guy not only had defrauded them with the points on a certificate,
but he was caught in the room with prostitutes and he was carrying heroin and I think cocaine
or something like that. He was, he was done for good time. Yeah. So this is great. This
is like, this is like way too late in the day to be going north on the five. You know
what I'm saying? He says to him, okay, here's what I want you to do. Book them in to your
city's jail. Book them in. I'm going to get on the freeway. I'm going to come to you when
you're done with them. I'm going to arrest them and take them back south. We're going
to, we're going to arrest them twice today because it was multiple charges. Yeah. It
turned out that I was one of very few hotels that actually had told the city's PD that
this guy had ripped us off because every single one of them said, Oh, he's top tier. So the
reality was, I mean, when I think when you counted it up, there were 14 reports, but
you know, on the whole thing about, you know, if you have a bad experience, you tell this
many people, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If 14 were logged, this guy did it a lot.
So fast forward a week or so, you know, I I've, I've gone on with my shenanigans and
Andy's off dealing with his and run into him. And he filled me in on how this dude did it
since you were there and you heard this, I'll let you take this part, but this dude was
brilliant at the time. It wouldn't work now, but it was brilliant at the time.
I almost forgot about this, but as soon as you started mentioning it, this is one of
those cases that still is up in my crawl. And I'll kind of get to that part of the story.
Once you called it, and I think you had called like after the second time, after you called
reward, you're like, Hey, this guy's up. He's probably going to be around. Didn't make a
report, but he's like, Hey, just put this dude on your radar. Right? Like here's a name.
Just put him on your radar. Sure enough. Couple more hotels were like, Oh, hey, some guy stayed
on a certificate. And then I heard it outside of the city. So we had a, like an association
kind of, of like all these different area hotels and they were like, yeah, this guy
stayed with us. And so he, I was like, Oh, this guy's got habit. So by the time that
bill had called me back and said, Hey, he's up. And I had my own reports. I probably had
maybe four or five, but it ended up being 14 different counts just in our County that
I could find. I called the rewards people and try to get them to like, Hey, how many
bogus nights if they were tracking it? And they had a few more. And so we were building
a, anyhow, long story short, he was about $120,000 worth of defrauding on certificates
give or take. Yeah. The guy was, was making a living on this thing. So I drive up an hour
and a half in traffic. I get this guy. And so I sit down, I interview him and he's playing
the hard light, you're like, what are you dumb cop? What do you, you know, he's, he's
like, what do you know? What do you know? Right. And so I'm working on him a little
bit. And so he finally starts to come around and he's like, all right, you want to know
how I did it? I go, well, I mean, if you're willing to, I'm not sure if I'll understand,
but if you want to tell me, I mean, I'll listen. Right. So I'm playing a little bit like the
dumb, right? He's like, I'm going to tell you exactly how I did it. And only that as
soon as I get out of this place, I'm going to do it all over again. Whoa. And you can't
do anything to stop me. I was like, oh, I'm sure you're absolutely right. But yeah. So
go ahead and tell me how did you do it? Right. Please share. So he had been in the service
industry for a long time. He came from the airline industry originally. And so he had
figured out with the airline, he was working for how the reward systems worked in issuing
certificates and rewards based on points and status. So he had kind of had worked the back
end of what Bill was saying. Oh, no, we do. Oh, they're too valuable and you can't touch
them. So he kind of knew he was in this really plush overseas job. He was ahead of some terminal
at some international airport and then the airline downsized and brought them all back
to the US. And then he was miserable because he had to pay taxes and all this other stuff.
So he was living like tax free, overseas, making six figures. I mean, he was living
the dream. He comes back here, his girlfriend left him all kinds of... So his life slowly
started to like fall apart. And then he was like, screw this job. I don't need this. And
so he quits. And then it starts to go down the spiral of like using drugs and prostitutes.
And so he ended up in like this spiral, but he knew how to play the system. And so what
he did, he goes, I bet you hotels work the same way as the airline industry did. And
sure enough, what he was doing is he would, at the time you could book, you could prebook
a room and say, Hey, I'm going to stay at the XYZ hotel. I'm going to prebook two nights.
And they were running a deal where you prebook two nights. They would send you a $50 or E
certificate or they'd, you know, for future use or future stay. They'd send you, you know,
whatever. So it was like a promo. So he was collecting these things, but then he would
cancel the stay. So he would never show up. He would cancel the stay, but he'd retain
the E certificate. And so that started working for a while because they didn't, they weren't
tracking the E certificate. So he was staying on legitimate E certificates on stays that
he never actually completed. For a while. For a while. Then they figured it out and
they changed to where you actually had, they'd still issued the E certificate, but then you
actually had to stay. If you didn't stay, they would cancel the certificate, but he
still had it. So he was going around and staying on all these bogus certificates of book stays.
Even though he wasn't staying at the time, they're still counting it as points towards
his room. So you'd still get point nights towards status. So he had worked this whole
thing out to where he was writing this way and he wrote it for almost a year. Slowly
people started calling because now you could only do that for so long before you're not
going to write it off anymore. Well, in the same County. Yeah. He's, yeah. He was bounced
around about three or four counties, but for the most part he was in the same two that
were kind of right next to each other. So he was kind of bouncing between the County
lines and staying at like different change within the brand. So he'd go, you know, limited
service, limited service, full service luxury. So he was kind of bouncing around trying to
play it off as best as he could. Thing that got up my crawl about this, I get this whole
thing out and I got him, right? I do them for fraud. I do them for $120,000 of fraud.
I do them for multi-jurisdiction. I mean, I'm all in the guy spent like four hours in
traffic and I spent like another five hours. This police report was about 13 pages long,
solid text. I had to lay out the fraud, I had to lay out how he was doing it and who
the victims were in this. Right? So I get the whole thing laid out. This whole thing
again, it goes up the detective detector. Like this is rad. Yep. We're done. Right?
So it goes over the DA, right? We're all like, all right, we're going. DA threw the whole
thing out. Why? The whole thing out, let him go. And now I'm ticked. So I call over the
DA. I'm like, dude, I spent, I don't know how many hours on this thing. Like what's
wrong with this thing? He's like, it's too complicated for a jury to understand. You
know what? No one will convict him. No one can understand the fraud. Now you laid it
out. He goes, I get it. And everyone else at Reddit gets it. Like we understand how
this thing worked, but you try to put this in front of a jury. They're not going to figure
it out. So we're not going to waste our time. So he's free. And he was right. Cause he looked
right, squirming. He goes, I'm going to do it again. There's nothing you can do about
it. He was right. I mean, okay. This whole episode, my jaw has just been on the ground
constantly. Oh God. And we haven't even gotten to the best store. We haven't even got through
the good stuff. This is the appetizer. I am absolutely blown away. So is he still like,
is he still doing it? This probably, well, the way that he was doing it, not now, cause
they've changed this particular brand, I think pretty shortly there afterwards started to
change the way in which the issue, the certificates and they don't even do it anymore. I haven't
seen a hotel brand in recent years that will pre issue or have an offer of like a return
of funds for staying. So I haven't seen that offer in a while. I'm sure he figured out
something with the times changing and, or maybe he got his life together. You never
know. Yeah. Cute kid. You're new to this game. Yeah. She's got the unicorns. Yeah. Sprinkles
and rainbows. I am, I am the hotel unicorn of the crew. Oh God. Okay. So let's see another
one of my favorites working one afternoon. I think we touched on this in a different
episode, but now that we have Andy here with us, you might have teased it previously. I
think I did actually know. I know I did because this was the man on the ledge conversation.
I shared a story about, about a guy on the ledge. Yes. I think you were here for that.
I think I'm pretty sure not metaphorical either. No, this is literal, literal ledge. So for
those of you that follow, sorry for retelling, but at least you got now the first person
perspective of the cop that was there. But so what happened was I'm working the front
desk. We got a call from Expedia saying that reservation for such and such name is fraud.
So I pull up our system and lo and behold, the guests had checked in like four minutes
ago, literally a minute before or two before the phone call. Nothing you can do. They were
shady at the time of check in. I get this call from Expedia. My first message is to
Andy, Hey, I need your help. I got fraud, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So we go up to
the room, knock on the door, girl comes to the door. Hey, we got a call from Expedia.
There's an issue with the reservation that it was flagged as fraud. Oh, she says, let
me get my boyfriend. Now she's barely opened the door. Like trying to be very aloof. I
don't want you to see what's behind me. So she tries to close the door. Andy's foot goes
in the door. It says door stays open. Now it's not open all that far, but it's, we can,
we can kind of see into the room, right? You got an entry. Yeah. So let's put this into
perspective is how we're looking at it. Andy standing right in the middle of the doorway
doorway as we're looking at it opens to the left. I'm standing to Andy's left. There's
another one of our managers standing to the right. Now the guy to the right can see who
he's talking to, but only sees a wall beyond that where I'm standing. I can see the guy,
but I can see through the room all the way into the bedroom area. Okay. So guy comes
to the door. Hey, we're here because of the fraud, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Oh, that's
a, that's my girlfriend's card. This is the girl that just said that it's her boyfriend's
card. So we start getting this weird little back and forth thing. I look over and he's
clearly surveying the situation. I can see it on his face that he's not happy with what's
going on. You can watch him thinking this all through. I know what's going through his
mind. I know he's like, okay, there's one, there's one, no, it's not good. There's one
female, there's one male. And then somehow there's a third person, a second girl that
now makes herself known. And we're like, you know, we need to see everybody like right.
As that happens, I saw a head in the bedroom and I said, there's someone in the bedroom.
Boom. Gun comes out and wait, you're the cop in the story. He's the cop in the story. So
gun comes out where I'm standing. I'm like, he's not pointing me. I don't, I don't give
two apps. I'm looking the other way. We're all good. Yeah. Doesn't, doesn't matter to
me, but the guy that I'm with is standing behind him and he's a shorter guy that puts
his eye level directly in line with Andy's outstretched Glock. And the fact that that
dude's eyes became the size of salad plates was amazing. Amazing. But then, you know,
as that all happens, there's radio calls, there's all this stuff going on. And it's
the guy had pulled the window out and had crawled out on the ledge. Yeah. This is on
the fourth floor. Yeah. We're, it's not like we're on the ground. No, no. I mean, this
is a 40 foot drop. This would have killed if you jump, you're done. Yeah. So, you know,
this guy goes crawling out and people at the pool are calling nine one one. And you know,
my hotel radio is going off that there's somebody on the ledge. We can hear sirens coming and
like all of this just goes south so quickly. It just ridiculously fast. All these cops
show up because you had actually called for backup because things were getting out of
control and the smoke wagon is out. So we're not sure what all the sirens are. And then
there's this situation in front and it's like, what the hell's going on? And then other cops
start showing up. And then my favorite part of that, of the cops arrival is the one dude
that showed up that missed the elevators. So he took the stairs and even though four
flights of stairs, he gets there. He is gas. So winded. Oh my God. Like he's bent over
at the waist. What is he going to do? Yeah. What is he going to do to help the situation?
My peers were not the pillars of physical fitness. They should have been. Are there
like tests? Yeah. But you know, or of tact or that either. Yeah. So from my point of
view, this whole story, got this call probably five times a day, Hey, there's a fraud. Cause
a fraud, as much of a pain it is for a hotel. It's 10 times the pain for the cop. Oh, at
least. Because your day, we call it stepping in a bucket. You stepped in a bucket because
you're at least the next five hours of your day is completely done because you have to
track down victims. And then again, where there's fraud, there's all kinds of other
crime. Each one requires a certain amount of investigation, charging, evidence booking.
There's all this stuff behind it. So there's no such thing as like a easy fraud case. Doesn't
exist. So he calls us another fraud case. I was like, and it was a little bit later
in the afternoon. I think I had like three or four hours left. I'm like, well, there
goes my day. Good thing I love bill because this is shooting my day right in the foot.
Yeah. You know, and keep in mind with credit card fraud specifically, okay. You check in
on my credit card. It's been stolen to his hotel. He's not the victim. I'm the victim.
So even though he's being defrauded, I have no dog in this fight until I get the charge
back 30 days later and by then it's too late. So keeping that tidbit in mind, when I would
call him, I know that nine times out of 10, it's not going to go the way he wants it to
go. But this story happens to take a nice little turn that helps avoid that five hours
of unnecessary paperwork.
And what I would do too, there's some ways you have to get a little creative, but there's
some ways to work around. I would make the hotel like the initial victim because they're,
they would be out, we'd find a loss, right? They would find some hard, tangible loss that
they're out of that I can assign as part of the elements of the crime to the fraud. So
I'd always find a way until I got a hold of the victim or the card and all this other
stuff. At least I had something that I can start with. I have some legal basis to at
least grab them and hold onto them until I could work this a little bit further.
So we go up to the room and same thing, knocking the door. First girl shows up, oh, yeah, no,
it's my boyfriend. He comes to the door, oh, no, no, it's my girlfriend. And the third
chick kind of shows up usually like, and they were young, they were like 18, 19, 20, they
were young. So the Spidey senses weren't going up quite yet. So in my head, I'm like young
kids are probably either, either they ran away and took like mom or dad's credit card
because they didn't like what happened.
You're trying to figure out the backstory of like, what are they doing?
Young and dumb versus career criminals.
Yeah. And we'd run into that occasionally. And so when they're young, it's either they're
missing runaway or they're being trafficked, get a little bit different sense from those
types of cases. Then you get stolen car, but it's like some 18 year old who got ticked
off at mom and dad and took the car and they reported stolen because it's tough love. And
so you're like, okay, I'm getting the initially I'm like, all right, this seems kind of stupid.
Like someone took mom or dad's credit card and they're upset and you know, whatever.
So you go look, all right, what's going on? And as the third one starts to show up, I'm
like, the Spidey senses start going off, like something's not right here. I didn't see the
head poke through the bedroom. I had no idea. So I go to push.
So this is, and this is why we had the bromance. Yeah. Yeah. Right.
Yeah. I go to push the door. I'm like, I've about had it at this point. Right. So I pushed
the door open because I've been ambushed the door. I've had guys running there. I've had
guns pointing me in hotel rooms. I've been in fights with guy. Bad things happen in some
of these rooms. I've chased people through hotels room with guns. So as soon as things
start starting to feel right, I'm like, all right, outcomes of smoke wagon. I throw the
door open just to put everyone on the ground to figure out what in the world we got to
get when detained. And all I hear is screaming from outside. Bill's radio is going off like
bananas. And I'm like, something's not right. And I look in the...
It's all that quick.
It was probably about two and a half seconds. This whole thing goes down and I start to
hear sirens and I'm like, okay, you see they're all coincidental or it's like the fire truck
going by or something. Right. But I'm like, something's not quite right.
Or it's something here.
Yeah. And then Bill was like, someone's outside. And I look at the bedroom window and the windows
open. It's like in the movies. The curtains are blowing. And I'm like, outs. I'm like,
we're in the fourth story. So now in my head, I'm thinking the guy jumped is what I'm thinking.
And all the sirens.
Yeah. And so what was happening, simultaneous to all this is that they're getting everyone,
all the guests are telling the front desk, there's a jumper. There's someone outside.
So they're thinking he's suicidal. They're thinking that. Now there's other people that
are seeing, they're calling 911 directly to dispatch saying, Hey, there's a jumper at
the hotel.
It's coming from all angles. My radio is about half mass and it starts going on. So I didn't
catch that part as I'm pointing guns at people and yelling. Right. So I don't know.
Multitask that well.
Yeah. There's a few extra things going on here. Right. I was like, I'm pretty like,
give me two or three things. I'm good at this. This was like eight going on. So I grabbed
my radio and I put out a little police code of like officer needs help. Yeah. So I'm going
to host me dispatch is now hearing you got a jumper. I'm also at the hotel. You're hearing
the officers putting out, Hey, officer needs help call at the hotel. So now everyone, every
cop in town is sitting in the lights, sitting sirens and everyone's coming. So I look initially,
I look out the window and look down. I'm expecting him to either, he either jumped in the pool
and like it's something in the scream is like the guy jumped in the pool or fighting or
like he would splat instead. It's like out of the movie. I look and there he is clung
to the side of the hotel on the little decor ledge that makes it look pretty. It's not
like a balcony ledge. It's not. It's like the little foam ledge that they glue to the
side of the hotel and paint to make it look pretty. It's a, it's a construction foam.
Yeah. It has like an architectural detail that can be plastered over. So it's not, it's
not very stable. No, not at all. And so he's like clung to the side of the hotel and I'm
like, uh, Hey man, you want to come back in the room? She's got to put these handcuffs
on first. He's like, no. And he's trying to like shimmy down to the next window over.
So he's trying to get into like the next room down. Okay. And I'm like, Hey man, like that,
I just like, that's not good. I would stop like that. Don't fall. I'm trying to help
you live here. Yeah. I'm like that. Not good. Bad, poor decision making right now on your
part. It's so in my head, I'm like, this is the, he's got all the dope on him. He's got
warrants. Like I'm like, this was a scapegoat. He was loading up everything in the room they
had and he was going to be gone. When you're thinking like, this is a guy I need to get
the other three to Andy's point, they had something on them. The other guy was dirty
and had, I want to say he had a warrant. He definitely went. The second girl we saw, I
don't remember if she had a warrant, but she had stuff on her. The first girl we saw was
the one that, that I was sharing that used her other purse. Do you remember that? She
didn't have warrants, but she was the one that was associated with renting the room.
So she went for that. That was the one that you didn't have the female officer on. And
when they searched her, they didn't catch the meth in her bra. So she went to jail with
meth in her bra because she entered a jail with narcotics. She went for a full body
cavity search and that's when they found the syringes that she had. Yeah. But her holster.
Yes. But yeah, the guy, the jumper on the ledge, he was the one that was the dumbest
and the only one that got to go home that day. Now that you say that, it's funny because
we were like, why did you run out the window? I thought I was scared. I thought I had warrants.
You don't have any warrants, bro. I thought I was going to get arrested. Yeah. Yeah. No,
he was, he was clear. So he got to go home. Yeah, I know. Strange, but true. Yeah. Yeah.
All right. So look on that note, let's cap this here then. So Liz, thank you again for
joining us. Always a pleasure. Thank you for having me. Andy, pleasure to have you here.
Hopefully we can have you here again soon. Oh, I can't wait. There's bursting at the
seams with stories. Awesome. All right. Well, thank you for everybody that's listening.
If you have anybody in the industry that you know that you would like to share our
podcast with that you think that they would enjoy, please send a link to them, share it
on your social media, send an email, whatever. It's spread the word. We'd love to see our
podcast growing and having you be a part of it. Yeah. Thank you guys. Thank you again.
Until we see you again. Toodaloo. Toodaloo. Thanks for listening.