An alleged con man twice stole the identity of guests at a luxury Times Square hotels — then used one person’s name to check in and turn a swanky room into a drug den, prosecutors say.
David Price, 36, allegedly called the Knickerbocker hotel Sept. 5, 2017, posing as the just-departed guest, and made up an excuse for why he had to remain in town, tacking on one week to the closed-out reservation.
The alleged fraudster wasn’t satisfied with the standard room, no. 909, and asked to be switched to a pricier suite, room no. 714, the complaint states.
The extravagant stay at the historic Beaux-Arts designed hotel built by John Jacob Astor IV cost $19,239.68, including room and car services.
A week later, cops caught up to the alleged crook and he was indicted on grand larceny, identity theft and forgery raps in Manhattan Supreme Court. He was sprung on $15,000 bond.
But he didn’t stay on the straight-and-narrow for long.
About six months later, while out on a bail, Price and a pal tried the same scam Feb. 24 at the Sofitel but got caught two days into the unauthorized stay when the departed guest alerted the hotel.
Prosecutors say that Price rang up reservations, asked to extend four nights and requested “an upgrade to a more expensive room,” court papers allege.
The tab for room no. 2815, a one-bedroom suite with sweeping views, had hit upwards of $3,000 when the checked-out guest noticed the startling charges, according to police and court papers.
Cops tried to access the room with a master key card at 10 a.m. on Feb. 26 but could only get the door ajar because it was chain-locked from the inside, the complaint states.
“I heard a loud commotion as well as a toilet being flushed multiple times in under one minute,” cops stated in court papers.
“I know that flushing a toilet in that manner is often a method by which small pieces of evidence are destroyed, particularly small quantities of narcotics,” the cop said.
After Price opened the door, police officers arrested him and two pals, Mihail Vastardis and Dominique LeBoeuf.
Cops returned with a search warrant, and despite the toilet flushing, allegedly found meth, MDMA, ecstasy, Xanax, Klonopin, meth pipes, pill crushers and scales stashed throughout the room.
Authorities also recovered a black notebook filled with the credit card numbers and personal information of dozens of people and four phony state IDs with Price’s picture.
Price, who served prison time in 2008 for a burglary in West Palm Beach, was held without bail March 5 on new charges of criminal possession of a controlled substance and criminal possession of a forged instrument.
Price’s defense lawyer, Amanda Ambrose, declined to comment.
Dylan Hackely, a spokesman for the Knickerbocker Hotel, said, “We are committed to maintaining the privacy of guest information and, on an ongoing basis, we take all appropriate and necessary measures to do so,” adding that the hotel immediately referred the matter to the NYPD.
Additional reporting by Ben Feuerherd
