Trio paid Rs 4 lakh bill at Mumbai 5-star with stolen credit card details

Three youths who turned to fraud to indulge their taste for high living and expensive stays at fancy hotels have now bought themselves a less cosy stay behind bars The trio were arrested after they racked up a bill of Rs 4 lakh at the Four Seasons hotel and tried to pay for it using someone elsersquos credit card details The police have discovered that the youths also used the same ploy at a top Juhu hotelAlso read Pickpockets shopping spree with stolen credit card leads to his arrestDuring their nineday stay at the Four Seasons Hotel in Worli they ran up a bill of over Rs 4 lakh File pic for representationOn Thursday the Worli police arrested Tarun Chandraprakash Kantharia alias Siddharth Kapoor 26 Prince Deepak Dhingra alias Vijay Malhotra 21 and Vikas Vijender Singh Chikkara alias Rohan Dahich 26 Tarun is a smalltime diamond merchant in Delhi while Vikas and Prince are students in Haryana The trio are childhood friendsAccording to the police the diamond merchant Tarun had some business in Mumbai and the other two decided to tag along They wanted to stay at lavish fivestar hotels but didnrsquot want to pay for it so they struck upon the idea of credit card fraudModus operandiCops said the trio did not even have a credit card but they somehow managed to get hold of a card number They made an online booking with this card number and sent over a photocopy of a fake driving licence with the same name ndash Vijay Malhotra The name and the card belonged to a man far away in the USThe trio then assumed their aliases and checked into the hotel on August 28 Throughout their nineday stay they ordered the best of dishes from the hotel menu called for room service and airconditioned cars for daily Mumbai darshan By the time they checked out on September 6 they had racked up a bill of Rs 4 lakh They asked the hotel to deduct the charges from the card used to make the booking and leftldquoWhile leaving the hotel they gave details of the credit card that belonged to a US national The card was registered in the name of one Vijay Malhotra from whose account the payment was deducted The accused had even produced a fake driving licence registered in the same namerdquo said Police Inspector Jayendra Sawant from Worli police stationThe fraud only came to light when the money was deducted from the account of the US national the real Vijay to whom the card belonged He blocked the card and Four Seasons had to return the paymentSawant added ldquoWhen the US national lodged a complaint with the local police in US Four Seasons had to return the money The hotel staff approached us on October 5 following which we registered a case of cheating and began investigationsrdquoWhen the cops tried to track the culprits using the phone number they provided to the hotel they learnt that the contact details were also fake However the police then checked data from nearby cell phone towers and traced a phone number that was almost identical to the fake number except for one digit Using this number they tracked down the first accused Prince in Haryana He then led them to his accomplicesPolice sources said the hotel had also shown negligence in failing to ask for the actual credit card which would have immediately uncovered the fraud However the hotel remained unavailable for comment despite several attempts made by middayNot the first timeIt later turned out that the accused went on to check into a different hotel in Juhu where they used the same trick again generating a bill of R5 lakh this time In addition they were also charged with robbery in Delhi said copsldquoThe accused already have a robbery case registered against them in New Delhi They dressed well and went to these hotels in blazers and ties so no one could suspect they were cheatsrdquo said Vinay Kulkarni senior police inspector of Worli Police station