Gay Aria employee steals over $700k through phony reservation refunds scheme, lavishes gifts upon fellow gay co-worker, and that guy reports him
This story has an "only in Vegas" vibe to it.
Meet Brandon Rasheed Johnson.
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He is 38, and has been a hotel operations manager at Aria for 10 years.
He's also gay, and loves expensive things. Johnson apparently felt he wasn't making enough at Aria, and after 9 years on the job, decided last year to start stealing from his employer in order to fund a lavish lifestyle.
Not being very bright, he engineered and incredibly stupid and simplistic scheme, to simply refund hotel reservations of a ton of Aria guests, but to refund those reservations to his own credit card instead of theirs. I do not have all the details, but I'm guessing this was never apparent nor victimizing to the guests, who probably really completed their stay, and thus were not expecting refunds, which Johnson was authorizing without their knowledge.
Johnson allegedly stole $776,000 this way between July 2022 and July 2023.
What caused his downfall? Was it a system at the Aria which checks for such anomalies, such as this case where one employee was authorizing a staggering number of refunds?
No. It was his romantic interest in another gay guy at work which brought this all crashing down.
In early July 2023, another gay male employee started receiving gifts and romantic overtures from Johnson. Apparently this co-worker was not opposed to it, as he accepted Johnson's request for a date, where Johnson spent on him lavishly. However, this dude became suspicious how Johnson had so much money to throw around, and started quietly looking into him. Within about 3 weeks, this employee uncovered that Johnson had authorized 309 refunds to the same credit card, and became highly suspicious. He quietly reported Johnson to his superiors. When Johnson was informed of this internal investigation, he quit his job 4 days later, via text message.
The police were then brought into the matter on July 27, and he was arrested on September 1.
If he had simply kept his work and romantic lives separate, this would likely still be going on, without Aria being the wiser. This actually would have been a fairly clever plan, had Johnson been a little smarter. If he had bought prepaid cards to receive the refunds (rather than his own credit card), and if he had done this more in moderation, it's very likely he would have never been caught.
It amazes me that these systems do not have better sanity checks on employees who have the power to spend company money.
