A front desk agent at the Trump International Beach Resort in Sunny Isles, Florida has been arrested and charged for pocketing the cash guests have used to pay their bills and covering the bills with his own credit card instead. He was doing this to earn the points.
- The hotel reported ‘irregularities’ in guest payments to the police and they began investigating the front desk agent on June 10.
- He would reportedly void, reverse, and cancel guest cash transactions in the hotel’s property management system and replace them with card payments.
- He did this on over $100,000 in cash charges. This hotel is taking in a lot of cash! Which raises questions!
The hotel’s losses – why he’s being charged – are the more than $3,100 in additional credit card merchant fees they had to pay compared to accepting cash. The guests themselves could have paid by card and the hotel would have voluntarily paid the fees. But they didn’t, so these are extra charges. And cash itself would have had processing costs, and could have involved incorrect change or theft by other employees (there’s some percentage of loss in aggregate). Those amounts are not deducted.
The hotel associate was arrested at the property on Wednesday. He faces felony charges of grand theft; organized scheme to defraud; offenses against computer users; and unlawful use of a communications device. Bond was set at $1,500 per charge ($6,000 total) and he was ordered to stay away from the hotel. The judge also noted an immigration hold.
There’s no Trump Hotels cobrand credit card. There used to be a Trump Rewards Visa issued by Bank One and then later Chase after its acquisition. But that wouldn’t have been a good card to use for this, because it only earned 1% back at Trump Atlantic City properties in the form of comps (0.6% in coin) on everyday spend and 2x in on-property spend. So the correct card for this would have been Sapphire Reserve 4x on direct hotel spend.
President Trump’s company is a licensor of its brand to this hotel, and not the hotel’s owner or operator, so there’s no meaningful harm from this scheme to the President or his family. The property is independently owned and operated and part of Preferred Hotels’ Lifestyle collection.
The President’s Office of Government Ethics disclosure includes a listing for Trump Marks Sunny Isles I LLC with a Sunny Isles license agreement earning $371,709. Ownership is shown as 99% DTTM Operations LLC and 1% Trump Marks Sunny Isles I Member Corp. I’m surprised the license fee revenue for the Trump name is so low.
What’s also interesting is the immigration hold. Since he hasn’t been convicted of a crime, and especially since the amount involved is under $10,000 the mere arrest and prosecution wouldn’t likely make him removable if he was in valid status. That would seem to imply that he was likely either:
- An undocumented immigration employed by this Trump hotel, or not work-authorized
- Being retaliated against by immigration authorities for imposing costs on Trump business associated.
An ICE detainer means the agency has reason to seek custody because the person is removable, and asks the jail to notify them prior to release and hold them briefly so that he can be picked up and ultimately deported. The hold means ICE is claiming there’s an immigration basis for detention.
He could have entered the U.S. legally but overstayed his visa. He could have entered as a visitor who wasn’t authorized for employment. Ultimately a criminal conviction for crimes involving moral turpitude and aggravated felonies (which in this case would need a loss over $10,000 or an imposed sentence over one year) are grounds for deportation, but there’s no such grounds at this point (the criminal charges wouldn’t be a status violation).
That’s awkward here because assuming this isn’t retaliatory (which would be even worse!) it seems to suggest that the Trump hotel property was improperly employing this Chilean immigrant.
“When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.”
By all means, prosecute those who break the law, whether it’s this worker, or the President. But to clutch pearls over this worker, while the President and his family grift billions off the office. C’mon, folks. If anyone else did this, especially from the other ‘team,’ you’d be J6ing again.
I suspect that thousands of people are doing this around the world.
Let the law deal with it and send the clown to jail. On the other hand,
Point whores manifest themselves in many ways.
One really must be the lowest common denominator on the planet to admire the grifter, sexual predator, and epic imbecile, let alone hold a branded card bearing his name.
Making the owner proud!
Learning from the best!
(Taps temple) Can’t abuse points systems if you don’t have a points system.
Well of course Donald Trump interviews, background checks and hires every clerk at the hundreds of his properties. This is about as novel as retail workers ripping off their retail employers. But then again some here apparently never get out of their mother’s basement so they would have no clue.
Oh, please! Like this has never happened before at any hotel. Really, did this just come out because of the CC used? Must be a slower than average Airline News day.
I just knew the folks with full blown TDS would post here. One of them is probably Meloni.
@Coffee Please — For real. Y’all are so Devoted to this mad man… it’s sad.
@Coffee Please….Trump is wildly unpopular in Europe…even worse than here. Why would Meloni want to be any more associated with him that absolutely necessary?
Further, even if the lunacy Trump spun was true, why would he say it? Every other American president would have the good taste and judgement not to embarrass an ally.
Moreover, why do you cult members not see the obvious? Why do you have zero standards for the most important office in the world? It’s because you’ve allowed the office to become so be based that we’re living through this nightmare
I’m surprised the license fee to use Trump’s name is that low. I’m thinking of a gold toilet with an American flag on the tank. If I can get Trump’s name on it, I could make a mint. Think how proud Trump supporters would be to fish their Trump phone out of their Trump toilet.
The things people will do for points
This is stupid. The worker should have been subject to disciplinary action, not arrest. The worker is wasting the hotels money, not committing a crime.
The hotel can discipline or fire the employee, of the discipline didn’t work. I don’t see why they need to involve LE here, unless there are bigger issues we don’t know about.
Obviously, this has nothing do with Trump, besides for the hotel name being licensed by his organization. Let’s not get all ridiculous. There’s enough real issues to get excited about Donald Trump.
@Common Sense — Is Gary still auto-modding for Trump, or has he lifted that? *about to find out*
“Your comment is awaiting moderation. This is a preview; your comment will be visible after it has been approved.” Oh Gary. Gary, Gary, Gary… *sigh* Let’s see… Biden? Is that also auto-pen? I mean, auto-mod? Bah!
Yup. Both presidents still auto-modded. How about no-drama Obama? Tan suit!
Wow, so, Obama is not auto-modded, but #45/47, #46 are. Huh. Wild.
“This is stupid. The worker should have been subject to disciplinary action, not arrest. The worker is wasting the hotels money, not committing a crime.” So, a worker uses the employers Amazon account to buy items the worker then takes home. So, is the worker just wasting the company’s money, or is it a crime (hint crime)? An employee has a plumber replace rather than perform a cheap fix on a water heater. In exchange, the employee gets his household plumbing job done free. Crime? Yep.
@This comes to mind — Of course, it’s a crime (fraud and theft). Most folks can see that (though, others, like @Common Sense, and @derek, seem to want to minimize it. Odd.) Some of us are also just disappointed at the hypocrisy and staggering difference in accountability between a low-level worker and a powerful political figure. The reality is that a frontline worker faces immediate arrest and felony charges for a credit card scheme, while the wealthy and powerful navigate the legal system with a completely different set of rules. Make that make sense.
With no SSN what meaningful rewards card could they even be approved for?
We”ve had challenges just getting AU cards for my BILs with new (<1yr) SSN and Green cards.
I'm thinking they must have been a server at the hotel restaurant – if it was $100K cash over a year or they were a night clerk and prepared bank deposits.
@YoniPDX — Oh, hey, welcome from FM!
@This comes to mind:
First, I think folks are seeing this as closer to “An employee uses the company’s discount code at a Marriott to get a discount” than buying something on the company dime and not paying for it.
Second, as the article indicated, there are costs associated with using cash vs card, so the “actual loss” might well be rather lower than indicated – maybe knocked down by about 10% – unless the hotel was in turn using a lot of that cash for, well, cash transactions as well and the physical cash was never touching a bank.
Ironically, given the Durbin Amendment, if this had been done with a reward debit card of some sort (there’s an Amex card and there used to be a Delta one via Suntrust, I think?), given how low those fees are (0.05%+$0.21-0.22), I’m not sure the hotel would have been able to claim any sort of loss – the debit card fees might well have been less than cash-handling fees (which seem to be over 0.10% at volume in most cases). Again, there’s always a chance the hotel was planning to use the cash for cash transactions themselves to avoid this.
Company should have disciplined him, make him reimburse the incurred x-action costs, then give him a promotion for his obvious ambition and creativity.
I get that the hotel incurred some fees by way of using a credit card, but this hardly is something worth arrest or a theft charge. He didn’t steal anything from the business. Cc charges are COGS, and he wasn’t increasing them beyond what the hotel would have incurred if the customer had swiped. In fact, he may have decreased them, depending on what type of card he used compared to what a customer may have used. Either way, it’s a tax deduction for the hotel. If I was the business owner I’d tell him to knock it off and keep an eye on him for a promotion. That’s drive and ingenuity!