A woman has been arrested for posing as a member of hotel housekeeping staff then looting the room she claimed to need to inspect. It’s an important reminder to be vigilant, even in situations which appear innocent.
Fake Housekeeping Staff Loot Hotel Room
After checking into the Four Points Sheraton in Bellingham, Washington, the victim heard a knock on the door. It was Jennifer Lynn Santoro, posing as housekeeper. She told the victim she needed to check the room to ensure it was fully-stocked. The victim let her in, did not keep a close eye on her, and before she knew what hit her Santoro cleaned her out of her wallet containing credit cards and $2300 cash and even her keys.
Police were notified and took fingerprints in the room. Those were later matched with Santoro, who was recently arrested for loitering at a grocery store before taking the police on a high-speed chase exceeding 100 miles per hour.
She is out on $25,000 bail, but faces charges for:
- second-degree burglary
- second-degree theft
- first-degree criminal impersonation
(As View From the Wing wonders, who knew it was illegal to present yourself as Marriott housekeeping?)
It’s easy enough to argue that you or I would not have fallen for this scam, but I’m not sure that is the case. If someone in a hotel uniform knocks on my door, claims to be housekeeping, and wants to ensure my supplies are stocked, I might well let her/her in. And if I did, I don’t generally hover over them (that will now change).
In most cases, I turn down maid service because I don’t like people in my room, especially if my stay is three days or less. Since the vast majority (it seems) of my hotel stays are 1-2 days, I don’t see a lot of housekeeping staff anyway.
But even though this scam is unlikely to be scalable, one thing I might do going forward is that if a housekeeper wants to enter my room, I’ll step outside the door, close it, then tell them to proceed. Unless these thieves have master keys for the hotels, that might lead to a very awkward situation…
CONCLUSION
It’s a strange story, but I don’t come down so hard on the trusting victim. It’s an important lesson, though: be careful who you let in your hotel room.
gtk, thx for posting
She is innocent until proven guilty. She broke the laws that some white males have created. These laws are their sense of what is fair to keep order in society. In other day and age stealing like this wouldn’t have meant anything.
All I see is industriousness on her part and not waiting for government handouts. White males engage in breaking the law on wall streets multiple times a day and steal money many ordes of magnitude more than this. They do not get caught or prosecuted because it’s hard to prove, everyone does it and they are white males.
Yesterday Jerome Powell increased rates less than the rate of inflation. Wages are not keeping up with inflation and this is government sanctioned theft while the pandemic relief of last two years went up people that didn’t need it because it was not need based.
There is theft everywhere in this society. Some people are just better covering their theft with the cover of the law, that’s why we have thriving lobbyist firms raking in the money.
Seriously? I think you’re comparing what seems to be apples and oranges.
Lol, love Debits posts…cue eye roll, yes all about white men. If there were no white people all the black on black crime would stop, black teenagers would stop having kids with multiple unknown father, they would stay in school.
Hey Debit – question for you – why don’t you just leave and go to one of those countries that just welcomes blacks with open arms and even provides outlets for you to just complain about white people. Oh right, the USA is actually the least racists of just about any place in the world outside of Haiti and the African subcontinent. This is a travel site, have you ever actually traveled anywhere and seen what real racism looks like. Only in the USA do we have a government that will ONLY consider a black woman for the supreme court. And remember how we had a black president for 8 years?
Also, you clearly don’t understand anything about federal interest rates, so you should probably refrain from commenting on them. Let me guess, you have a PhD economics and you are the foremost expert on rates (despite you probably just vomiting up some garbage that Facebook fed you about rates that is complete nonsense).
I actually like that you post things like this and implore you to keep doing so because nothing turns blue votes red faster. People like you that try to call racism on EVERYTHING turn it into a punch line. So if black men had made the same laws, would they be acceptable. I would like to hear your thoughts on what the laws should be so that it doesn’t matter what the race of the person creating them is. Remember, enforcement is a different issue. I’d urge you to look at the law in countries that are completely controlled by blacks (like Haiti and much of Africa), if the legal systems are not as awful as the western world then why don’t you move? Cue response that any problems with any society are just because of white people – with no explanation as to why.
I swear this is either an AI troll comment generator or mad libs at this point
the bankers of a certain persusasion are the real thieves….
If you have a chance, read an interesting story from the early days of hacking google: “Searching for Susy Thunder” She was a pioneer of “social engineering” including such tricks as walking with a clipboard to largely go wherever you want (nobody will think you’re up to anything because you’re working) or another: Carry a BIG ladder and folks will hold open doors for you to anywhere you want to go. Walk into the movies and watch something for free! Just take your ladder out when you’re done!
I’m kicking myself in that I fell for a phishing email a few months ago that I shouldn’t have and it was a test, thankfully, and reported it. Before you click on links, or let someone have access to your stuff, it helps to just count to 3 and ask yourself “does this make sense?” The mental alarms go off and that helps.