New Scam Alert for IHG Employees

**NEW HOTEL SCAM ALERT for EMPLOYEES**

I am here to unfortunately report our HIE got hit with a new scam. We are very accustomed to the Patel's, but this was impressive, and I have to share the details as I still can't wrap my head around it. So, one of my longest/trusted employees and Opera system expert, In my opinion at least- (I trained her myself) was working overnight audit and got a call around 630am last week. They guy stated he was from the IHG IT department and there was a scheduled system update for Opera. She did the right thing and asked who scheduled it and when and he mentioned our head Engineer by name and stated 24 hours prior. She said he had a southern accent and was super nice and polite. She asked him how long the system would be down as her shift ended soon and she knew she would have some early check-outs coming down- he said only about 10mins they were going to be resetting and testing the CC pin pad system. It was known to all front desk employees that the pin pad system did indeed crash about 24 hours prior and our Engineer did make a call to troubleshoot.

So she moved forward with the call and he literally walked her through the Opera system STEP BY STEP-literally telling her what tab to click on, using all the correct terms. Knew how to instruct to open a new window for folios- used the term FOLIO. So he told her he had virtual CCs that were going to be tested in the PINPAD and he had her enter -2345.67 into window 2, Gave her a reference number for transaction. Once she did that she immediately stopped and had a feeling something was off. She lied to the guy and said she had a guest at the desk and needed to put him on hold, she was smart and before she did that- she asked for His name, his title and a direct contact number in case they got disconnected. She put him on hold and called the Assistant General Manager who would be the appropriate chain of command call as she was to arrive at 7am anyways. She ran the entire scenario by the AGM- who reiterated that the pinpad system did go down 24 hours prior, the Engineer did make a call to troubleshoot and acknowledged that this called had the engineers name and that info it seemed legit.......my Night Auditor even went as far to googling the name she was given and found a LinkedIn page with his name and being an IHG employee. CRAZY!!! The AGM basically gave her the go ahead to complete whatever he was having her do-which sucks SO BAD. So what ended up happening was 6 transactions total 2 on each station with a pin pad. Each transaction for -2345.67 Each terminal one with a Visa and one with a Mastercard "to test" the pin pad processing system. Again, a reference number was given by him for each transaction. He had her pick 3 guests that were due out 24 hours later and open a 2nd window on their billing folio's so the guests payment etc...was unaffected whatsoever If you are Opera users. The only other way I would see to do this would have been through a PM account I guess. After 1 Visa and 1 MC on each he then had her hit the "Check button" which still confuses me- so that then created $0.00 balance settling the "transactions" out. As much I know the Opera system, I still can't process how they got $15,000 out of doing it that way, but it scary as clearly this has to have been a former employee of somewhere who is an Opera expert. I am still in shock. The conversation ended with him stating he would call back in less than 12 hours with a report on how the system ran and gave her an IT TICKET number!!!!!

She printed out all the folios and passed them to the AGM on her arrival- Unfortunately nothing was said to any other employee about it!! I did not find out until 24 hours later when my GM approached me about her getting calls about the transactions and I pulled up the reports myself and then called the NA employee and she told me where the folios she printed were and the documentation of the guy's name, title and phone number he gave. I am happy to share the guy's name that he used if anyone would like- the LinkedIn profile is still up as I went and searched it myself- obviously that is NOT the man who called but who he pretended to be. And regretfully, because 24 hours passed before anyone else found out about it- the transactions could not be stopped at the time of finding. I am not sure what is happening behind the scenes as this is still a current investigation. The employee is 100% NOT involved whatsoever, so this is NOT an inside job/scam.

I am usually the one who makes all the IT calls and submits tickets etc. and does the remote working with the IT department, but I happened to be off the day the pin pad system crashed so I didn't even know that happened or that anyone made a call. The engineer is new to us, but we are sharing him from our sister hotel down the street and he is a super long term trusted employee as well.

Has anyone heard of this happening ever??? Would you have immediately thought it was a scam as well or would you have possibly fallen for it as well??? Any input is welcome as long as it is not bashing the employee who is the victim of the scam. She is absolutely mortified about it and is emotionally really struggling with being taken advantage of as I would expect to be a normal human reaction.