The General Prosecutor's Office of Georgia has revealed a transnational crime involving the management of six hotels operating in Georgia which entered into a deal with a criminal group in order to fraudulently misappropriate funds belonging to various individuals and legal entities.
Criminal proceedings have been instituted against eight individuals, reports the General Prosecutor's Office.
The members of the criminal group opened bank accounts in Georgian banking institutions and registered as users of the POS terminal and Geo Pay payment system on behalf of the companies owned and operated by them, which provided hotel services.
With this, they were given the opportunity to draw money from the card accounts and transfer it to the desired bank accounts by entering data from the bank cards of various foreign nationals in the POS terminal and Geo Pay payment system.
The defendants booked hotel rooms owned by them on behalf of non-existent customers through popular websites providing remote hotel booking service. When paying for artificially increased value of booked rooms, the defendants entered the data of illegally obtained bank cards of citizens of different countries in the POS terminal and Geo Pay payment system and thus drew a large amount of money from the card account.
After withdrawing from bank accounts, the amounts obtained through criminal means were distributed among the members of the criminal group in Georgia and abroad in accordance with a pre-agreed percentage.
As a result, banking institutions in Georgia and US citizens who booked with these hotels have lost 687,321 GEL and $60,400.