‘Dead cockroaches for used condoms…’ how a man defrauded over 300 hotels with 33 items to extort free stays and money?

A Chinese man defrauded several hotels by planting ‘dead cockroaches, used condoms’ in rooms and filing complaints about hygiene issues. He then blackmailed them to offer him free accommodation and also extorted money from them. He was later arrested.

A South China Morning Post reports that a 21-year-old man, identified as Jiang, used props such as cicadas, dead cockroaches, used condoms and hair to stage the hotel scam. He would check in, claim unsanitary conditions and demand compensation or freebies.

Jiang came up with this scheme after he ran out of funds he needed to enroll in college

“Over a 10-month period, Jiang frequently stayed at hotels, sometimes checking into three or four different ones in a single day. He would exploit minor blemishes or plant insects, bugs and hair to threaten hotels with complaints or online exposure and demand free accommodation or compensation,” a police officer from Linhai in Zhejiang told the magazine.

After Jiang successfully defrauded several hotels, the establishments began communicating with themselves and identified Jiang as a customer who had raised similar complaints, a hotel staff member told the newspaper. Then one of them reported him to the police when he tried to trick them.

“His complaints about suspected bugs and hair in the rooms were alarming. After discussing these incidents with several other hotels, we noticed a recurring pattern with this guest,” staff said.

An initial investigation following Jiang’s arrest at a local hotel revealed 23 packages of items used in his scam. Further inquiries revealed that since last year he had stayed in over 300 hotels and successfully defrauded 63 of them. His scam netted him a total of $5,200.