Fraud alleged against couple claiming to be from L.A.
Listen to this articleIn most cases, we are familiar with many stories of guests stealing some of the most unusual things from hotels across the US. But, there have been some cases, though unusual, of guests reporting items being stolen from them.
In this case, a couple claiming to be from Los Angeles, California took to social media in May and accused a New York City hotel of having unsecured safe in their rooms are now on the run after the hotel, through its attorney had expressed an interest in suing them for libel and fraud.
Susan Schroeder, who is 23 years old and her 24 year old husband Mark Schroeder (if that are their true names), who were staying at the (name withheld) hotel, had claimed a few weeks back on their Facebook feed that their New York City trip became a nightmare after a safe that was assigned to their room in the small family hotel was allegedly broken into and more than a thousand dollars in cash was missing.
Their story was even quickly picked up by a few travel blogs who were initially glad to share the couple’s supposedly terrible experience. But many later became amused after the couple repeatedly refused to file a complaint with police, while claiming that the owners of the hotel seemed like reasonable people and that they would instead prefer to give them an opportunity to refund them the claimed sum.
However, after jointly agreeing to use the services of a locksmith to first investigate their claims, the couple later rejected the said locksmith’s findings, which suggested that the broken safe story was clearly fraudulent.
“We both agreed to an independent investigation by an expert Local locksmith, a company in proximity to our operations, and which has an impeccable track record, to investigate. But after learning from the locksmiths that their claims were bogus, the couple quickly disappeared,” said a seemingly amused Tony Wissler, who runs the ten room hotel establishment with his wife.
He is certain that the couple who claims that they were from Los Angeles, were probably not even from there, but are playing out-of-State-visitors, who are going around extracting monies from hotels who may obviously want to keep their names out of bad press.
Efforts to verify the authenticity of the couple’s respective Facebook accounts has been futile, while messages about the incident that were sent to them remain unanswered.
A subsequent check several hours later showed that the accounts were either deleted or removed from the users search results.
(Photo by Claudia Gestro)
Dennis Adonis is a Guyana-born International Journalist, Author, and Software Engineer. As of the May 1 2015, he has written and published more than twenty books of various genres, in at least five languages. His work in international journalism is widely known; having written for some of the most respected print and digital media outfits in North America and Europe. From the Ebola crisis in Liberia, to the war in Ukraine, he has been on the ground covering some of the most breathtaking and intriguing news events in more than thirty countries worldwide. Now an integral part of our team, he will no doubt bring a wealth of journalism experience and interesting news features to our many readers, and followers.
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