Fraudster pulls credit card fraud on Wynn Vegas to the tune of $58K

This is an interesting case

Las Vegas Strip resort spending spree draws fraud charges | Las Vegas Review-Journal

Man checks into Wynn Vegas and presents a credit card for a pre-authorization, which is routine. All hotels block out a sum on a guest's credit card upon check in, whether to cover room charges, or incidentals. Apparently these days due to coronavirus precautions the desk clerks do not even look at cards they just allow guests to insert them themselves into a chip reader, which begs the question of that perhaps the man was not even using his own credit card for all of this.

At some point the man was upgraded to a $1950. per night Villa, which actually sounds low for a Wynn Villa, but may be a reduced rate these days due to limited demand. At that point the front desk tried to run his credit card for an increased pre-authorization to reflect the additional daily room rate, and the card was declined. The man then presented a corporate credit card for the pre-authorization.

Later, he bought a $13K Rolex in the hotel and had it charged to his room. Apparently this extra $13K was not pre-authorized but the Wynn store simply allowed him to walk out with the watch. Later, Wynn contacted the guy and told him that he had exceeded his pre-authorization, and the man then presented a letter, apparently forged, from his credit card bank showing he was authorized to charge an additional $55,000.

Wynn looked up the guy's hotel stay record and realized that he had had a similar problem in the past, with exceeding his authorization on his credit card, but had managed to make good on the bill after returning home.

This time, upon checkout, he was presented with the $58K bill, asked to pay in cash, and when he could not - was arrested. Apparently he had a prior criminal record for this sort of thing. The corporate card had been opened towards the end of June 2020, just prior to his stay, and cancelled by mid July 2020, before he checked out, due to suspected application fraud. (Sounds like a platinum corporate AMEX - these are often granted initially based on just good credit, and later suspended upon "financial review" pending proof of income. I have both a personal platinum and a corporate platinum AMEX and at least once during the life of the accounts I've been hit with an AMEX financial review. No, I don't have a Centurion - the annual fee on one of those is a waste.)

The way I look at it, the hotel was stupid to allow him to charge the Rolex to the room without getting a pre-authorization on the card attached to the room. And the hotel should not have let him get so far ahead of himself as $58K without pre-authorizations for all of the charges. A real merchant would never accept a "letter" to validate charges, it would want an actual electronic authorization. (It is not clear if $58K was his entire bill, or just the portion where he exceeded pre-authorizations where the hotel was ultimately unable to charge the card.) Apparently, the credit card was cancelled by the bank before the man checked out of the hotel.

Where the man went wrong was in presenting the forged letter. Also, perhaps, in getting too greedy with charging a Rolex to his room. (People DO love those Rollers!) If he had not presented the forged letter, still he might have been guilty though of violating "innkeeper defrauding" statutes - i.e. skipping out on an unpaid hotel bill, but he probably would have at least made it out of town before they realized what had happened and not drawn their attention.

Reminds me of this case
Sharron Laverne Parrish Jr. Charged With Apple Credit Card Scam - Business Insider
where a guy was presenting a maxed out, already closed, set of debit cards to the Apple Store to buy goods. In each instance the cards were of course declined, whereupon the guy would offer to "call his bank" himself, and then present a correct number of digits "authorization code" to the Apple Store clerk to enter in their system, which would apparently override the system and allow the charge to go through. The guy must have figured out that any set of random digits, as long as the correct number of digits, would work to trick the system into processing the transaction. This guy got away with $309K in purchases before the authorities caught up with him.
Ended up getting four years eight months in da fed for that one.
Man Sentenced in �Force Posting� Scheme that Defrauded Apple