MILWAUKIE, Ore. – A phone call in Raymond Bolton’s hotel room early Tuesday morning made him feel very vulnerable.
“It’s very scary when they can reach out and come right into your hotel room and know right where they are,” said Bolton. “He knew the hotel, he knew the room.”
Bolton believes he was a target of a new phishing scam meant to get his personal information and ultimately steal his identity.
Someone called his hotel room at the Econo Lodge in Milwaukie at 2:54 a.m. and told him a long story about a broken computer system at the hotel. The caller asked Bolton for his name, address and credit card number.
“He apologized for calling at the odd hour. He asked if this was room 203,” Bolton said. “[He said] the manager had phoned him asking him to restore all the guest information manually.”
Bolton told the caller he would give the front desk his information in the morning when he was dressed.
“I stewed all night long. I knew exactly what I was going to tell the manager in the morning and the letter I was going to write the parent corporation.”
Later Tuesday morning, Bolton found out the phone call was the latest trick criminals are using to catch people off guardand get their personal information.
The manager did not have permission to talk with KATU News on camera, but he wanted hotel guests everywhere to know that this kind of scam is a real problem that has happened before at the Econo Lodge, and at other hotels across the country.
He said there is not much they can do to stop the calls. Sometimes rooms can be reached without going through an operator, and even if they reach an operator there is nothing suspicious about asking for a room number.
“I just hope enough people hear about this, innocent people don’t surrender their information to this kind of jerk in the middle of the night,” said Bolton.