Pranksters Get Guests to Trash Hotels Like Rock Stars

By Harry Kimball,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 13, 2009 4:17 PM CDT

A dastardly online organization has taken prank-calling to nefarious highs and is being investigated by the FBI, Fox News reports. PrankNET and its leader, “Dex,” have used untraceable Internet phone calls to:

  • impersonate a corporate honcho and make KFC employees spray down their entire restaurant with fire suppressants, evacuate, and strip bare in freezing temperatures.
  • impersonate the front desk at a hotel and convince patrons to smash a window with a toilet tank lid to escape "deadly" exotic spiders.

And much, much more. Dex also convinced hotel staff to persuade a guest to smash windows with his truck—“I just pulled off the most epic prank. I had a hotel guest back his truck into the hotel front window,” he Tweeted—and caused $50,000 in damage when a prankee triggered sprinklers at a hotel and flooded the building. “While I can't help finding Dex's calls extremely amusing,” a fellow prankster says, “I think that they need to stop before he seriously hurts or kills someone.” (More hotel stories.)

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