Spanish authorities have arrested a 20-year-old man suspected of hacking a hotel booking website to reserve luxury rooms costing up to €1,000 ($1,180; £870) per night for just one euro cent, as reported by ABC News.
The suspect was detained while staying at a Madrid hotel, where he is alleged to have racked up more than €20,000 in losses over multiple stays. Police said the crime involved manipulating the payment validation system, marking it as the first detected case of its kind in Spain.
Authorities launched the investigation after suspicious activity was reported by a travel booking site. Remarkably, investigators discovered in just four days that the suspect had used his real identity to make the bookings.
According to police, the cyber attack tricked the system into authorizing transactions after entering only €0.01 as the charged amount. The irregularity was only discovered when the payment platform processed the actual payment to the hotel.
During his latest stay at the Madrid hotel, which would normally cost €4,000 for four nights, the suspect reportedly consumed minibar items and left other bills unpaid. Police suggest that additional hotel bookings may have been involved, though no further details were disclosed.
The suspect had previously been arrested in the Canary Islands for a similar luxury hotel scheme. Authorities have confirmed that the case remains under further investigation, highlighting vulnerabilities in online booking platforms and the growing risks of cybercrime targeting payment systems.
