Written by
A prank caller has called a number of hotels across the South, fooling hotel employees and customers into causing thousands of dollars of damage to the hotel. The calls are always the same. A frantic man, claiming to be from the fire sprinkler company, saying they must act now, or else the systems will go off.
Here’s a description of my personal favorite, which resulted in over $50,000 in damage…
The caller phoned the hotel, saying he was from the sprinkler company. He told the employee that there was a problem with the sprinkler system and it needed to be reset. That much seems believable. But, not what happened next.
The caller informed the employee that, to reset sprinkler system, she needed to pull the fire alarm. She did, which caused the alarm to sound throughout the hotel. He then told her to push the alarm lever back up. When it wouldn’t go back up, the prankster said she needed to break out all of the lobby windows to reset the system and avoid the sprinkler from going off. So, she did, with the help of a hotel customer. It gets better.
Next, the caller said that a portion of the sprinkler head needed to be broken off. This, too, was to reset the system and avoid the sprinklers from going off. Unfortunately, when the sprinkler head was broken, it caused a steady, strong stream of water to fill the lobby. Then, the caller told the employee to find the breaker and all power to the hotel.
So, the alarm is going off, all the windows of the lobby are smashed out, there is standing water on the ground, and power has been cut to the whole hotel.
Finally, the fire department arrived, determined the hotel was safe and let the hotel guests return to their rooms.
No one is sure how many hotels this person has called, but we do know that 4 hotel employees have fallen for it. (All in southern states.) (Not that that matters.)
There’s a lesson to be learned here. If someone calls, telling you to break a bunch of windows, when you could just have easily opened them, think twice.