MFM Minisode 498

**Karen Kilgariff** (0:06)
My Favorite Murder Hello, and welcome.

**Georgia Hardstark** (0:19)
To My Favorite Murder.

**Karen Kilgariff** (0:21)
The mini-sode.
And this week we have a very special themed episode for you. We're celebrating Exactly Right's brand new limited series podcast, Royal Swindle. It premiered on Thursday, July 23rd.

**Georgia Hardstark** (0:33)
And Royal Swindle tells the story of two fabulously wealthy Australian women who charmed their way into British high societies in the 1990s. But behind all the glamour and country houses, these women are hiding a dark past, some very bad intentions, and a truly wild con.

**Karen Kilgariff** (0:51)
So in honor of our new show Royal Swindle, we are going to be reading all scammer emails. I love this. This is my favorite theme.

**Georgia Hardstark** (0:58)
Let's just change the mini-sodes to all scammers, because I couldn't stop laughing.

**Karen Kilgariff** (1:04)
There are many podcasts that would have a problem with that. That's true. I think we really got into that space. Do you want to go first?

**Georgia Hardstark** (1:09)
Sure.

**Karen Kilgariff** (1:10)
Do it.

**Georgia Hardstark** (1:11)
Okay. Here's a hotel scam story from the employee perspective.

**Karen Kilgariff** (1:15)
Hi.

**Georgia Hardstark** (1:16)
I'll admit I'm not a day one listener, but I have been listening for a long time, to the point where my husband mentioned my love of That Murder Podcast in our wedding vows.

**Karen Kilgariff** (1:26)
Oh my God.

**Georgia Hardstark** (1:27)
I've been waiting for the day I'd have something to write in. I just listened to the recent episode about Anna Delvey and cackled at the part where you mentioned all of the hotel staff fighting to take care of her because she tipped so well. Because me and my fellow employees did that once with a woman who turned out to be scamming the hotel.

**Karen Kilgariff** (1:44)
Yes.

**Georgia Hardstark** (1:45)
Well, not the hotel directly, but I'll explain.
About 10 years ago, I was working at a restaurant that was attached to a hotel. One day, this lady started calling in for room service and tipped at least 20 bucks every time he brought her something, regardless of how much or how little you brought. We all noticed because we were money hungry little monsters, and people started fighting over who got to take care of her, like to the point people would stand by the room service phone just waiting for her to call. Smart.

**Karen Kilgariff** (2:11)
I mean, and also have you ever stayed at a hotel where it felt like someone was standing directly by the room service phone?

**Georgia Hardstark** (2:16)
Like, oh, I didn't think you...

**Karen Kilgariff** (2:18)
I wasn't ready to order my waffles.

**Georgia Hardstark** (2:19)
I don't know what I want. Day two or three of her stay, her daughter came with her kids to stay with her. They told us the daughter got rich recently when she quote, fell into a job selling private airplanes.
I know, I know. It's ridiculous. I can't believe we fell for it. But anyways...

**Karen Kilgariff** (2:35)
But just really quick, because there's a lot of people who fly on private airplanes. They don't own the plane.

**Georgia Hardstark** (2:41)
It seems like the daughter sold those planes to the rich people.

**Karen Kilgariff** (2:44)
Yes, I'm just saying hard job because there's not that many who can actually be like, no, no, no, we don't just want to rent the plane for this one trip for an egregious amount of money.

**Georgia Hardstark** (2:53)
It's a very specialized field probably.
By day six or seven, one of the restaurant managers got suspicious and told the hotel manager they should run her credit card and make sure it was valid. I assume this is normal practice when someone hits a certain dollar point, but I don't know. They ran the card and it went through, but my manager had a bad feeling and said the hotel manager should call the credit card company to have them reach out to the person who held the account to make sure it was the lady putting charges on the card. So, not shockingly, it was a gender neutral name, so we hadn't questioned it. Turns out, this lady had met a man at a bar across the street and they decided they wanted to do a little horizontal tangoing and got a hotel room. The next morning, the guy left, but he never checked out of the hotel as a walk-in. There was no checkout date on file, so the room just kept charging the card.
I walk out all the time. I didn't know you had to check out.

**Karen Kilgariff** (3:48)
I mean, these days, you usually don't.