A robber who pretended to be a guest at the ultra-luxe Peninsula in Hong Kong hotel was able to trick the staff into opening an in-room safe and escaped with HK$50,000 (about $6,446 USD).
The man approached the front desk of the hotel at about 4am on Sunday claiming to have lost his room key. The room number he gave was occupied by a French businessman. He gave the businessman’s name and birth date as proof of identity. The real guest and his wife were in bed in the room at the time.
After obtaining the spare key, the man apparently waited until the couple went out on Sunday afternoon before letting himself into their room.
“He then telephoned the front desk from the room saying he had forgotten the password of the safe and asked for assistance to open it,” a police officer said.
He greeted hotel staff wearing a pair of slippers, a blue T-shirt and jeans and they helped him open the safe. After the staff left, the robber emptied the safe and escaped with cash, a laptop computer and several credit cards.
The break-in was discovered when the French businessman and his wife returned that evening. Police were called and after viewing footage from surveillance cameras, police said they were looking for a tall non-Asian man. Detectives suspect the intruder is from South America.
Director of public relations at The Peninsula, Olivia Toth, said she was unable to comment while police were investigating.
I once left all my cash in a hotel safe in Sorrento. I was already halfway to Tuscany before realizing what I had done. Our tour guide called the hotel and the on-duty manager said we would need to fax permission to the hotel and give them the four number code to open the safe. The permission had to be signed by us and counter-signed by someone else. He would not open it until the next morning when the general manager came on duty and the two of them opened it together and verified in writing what they found (the cash and how much). They kept it there for our guide’s return and she gave us the money from her own cash stash. It amazes me that such a prominent hotel would have such lax procedures.