Scamsters are misusing the ease of online payment to trick hotel and homestay owners in Darjeeling hills of their money.

A hotel owner recounted an instance: “Late at night, a person called up my front office and said he had just arrived in Darjeeling and needed a room."

The caller said he would check in within half an hour and sought to transfer an advance through a mobile payment service. “He then sent a message to the front office person that he had accidentally deposited Rs 30,000 instead of Rs 3,000 and requested an immediate refund, which the front office person did,” said the owner. "Later, we discovered that Rs 30,000 had not been credited at all."

A homestay owner said she had evaded similar attempts to defraud her.

“The message they send stating 'the amount has been credited to your account' is almost an exact copy of a bank message. However, if one is careful one will notice that the message has come from a particular phone number and not from a bank,” she said.

However, many have fallen prey to the fake message.

The pattern is usually repeated, said hotel and homestay owners. The calls usually come at night stating that the person has just landed and wants a hotel room immediately. He insists on making an advance payment online.

Sometimes, a scamster books a hotel room through an online reservation site that does not take advance sums. Then he calls the hotel, explains his "problem" and tries to con the owner through the same mobile payment process.

In one instance, the hotel owner told the caller to take his refund after he checked in. “This caller had a profile picture of a police officer and told me not to harass him," the owner said.

Darjeeling SP Praween Prakash asked hotel and homestay owners to approach the police in such cases. “We need details to pursue the cases,” he said.