If you’re making an overnight trip to San Antonio in the future you should think twice before choosing pizza over room service. You might lose your credit card information to a pernicious scam running in the city.
TikToker Leslie Gaytan (@mustbeleslieg) is going viral with a video warning travelers about the long-running scheme that’s plagued the Alamo City’s hotels for several years. Her claims of narrowly avoiding the scam were posted three days ago and have already picked up over 350,400 views.
“If you’re staying in hotels in San Antonio, Texas, do not order pizza I repeat, do not order pizza from a place called House of Pizza,” Gaytan warns her viewers in the video.
“We just left San Antonio yesterday. And we stayed in a hotel there, right? When we first got to the hotel, we opened the door to a room and there was three fliers on the floor and it was like pizza. We’re starving. It was like 10:30 at night,” she claims.
She says that she found a deal on one of the fliers that interested her, from House of Pizza. According to Google, the restaurant is “permanently closed” but Gaytan states someone answered when she called the number on the flier she had found.
“I give her the address of the hotel. And she was like, OK, are you going to be paying with cash or card?” she states. “I only have cash on me. So I said I’m gonna be paying cash. As soon as I said that, she said, ‘OK, give me a moment,’ The line kind of like took a pause and then somebody else took the phone.”
Gaytan alleges that she placed her order with the person who picked up the line. She says she and her boyfriend waited several hours without the pizza arriving when he suggested they look up House of Pizza online.
Gaytan claims they looked up House of Pizza on Yelp and discovered multiple negative reviews: “The majority of people were saying that they never received their food. They never received their order. That the pizza or the food never came.”
One review from this Thursday, posted by Armzilla T. stated, “Scam artists. Fake pizza places! Think about it, no real address, Delivery only. Horrible service. Compare other flyers. They use other pizza establishments. ”
She then claims they attempted to call House of Pizza back but states that her number was blocked.
“That got me thinking, it’s a scam,” she states to her viewers. She alleges if she had offered them a card number, “we still wouldn’t have got a pizza but now they would have had my credit card info.”
She claims she realized, “All three of the [flier] menus are the same. They have the same food. Same pizza prices the same wording the same fine print three different flyers but with all the same food, it blew my mind.”
Gaytan claims that the pizza was eventually delivered to the hotel’s front desk two hours later than promised. “It was 12:30 at night and we got a call at the hotel. It was the front desk and he was like, hey, there’s a pizza here for you. And I was like, It’s OK, we ordered the pizza two hours ago. Tell them we don’t want it. Do not give them my room number.”
@mustbeleslieg Creepy pizza conspiracy 😭 #conspiracy #creepypasta ♬ Mysterious and sad BGM(1120058) – S and N
Several viewers claiming to be hotel workers or San Antonio residents claimed that Gaytan’s allegations were true.
Christal (@5k_mommy) wrote, “Yes this is true I worked in hotels downtown and when we see them putting flyers we call security.”
“So true work at hotel here n sa and got a lot of complaints from guests about this place,” another viewer commented.
‘Yess girl I work at a hotel downtown and we always tell guests to not order from the flyers and give them other recommendations,” Luisa Smith (@fernandita_477) added.
San Antonio’s long history of pizza scams
Gaytan’s suspicions seem to be confirmed by local news reports over the years. In 2015 the San Antonio Express-News wrote about the scam, describing it as a “plague.” In 2019 local Fox affiliate Fox San Antonio reported on a social media post by San Antonio PD warning tourists to “not order from any of the restaurant flyers that are slid under your doorways.”
A 2019 report from KSAT 12 also warned against the scam. The station interviewed Hotel Valencia Riverwalk employee Stacy Seaborn who stated scammers “typically follow a guest onto an elevator even someone who is you know key access only,” to distribute fliers.
We have reached out to the Hotel Valencia Riverwalk via email or a statement.
The report also stated, “Police say hotel guests order in but instead of getting a fresh slice of pizza, their credit card information is stolen.”
The Daily Dot has contacted the SAPD media contact via the City of San Antonio‘s website for a statement on Gaytan’s allegations.
The scam is not only found in San Antonio. A 2021 post by the travel blog Live and Let Fly reported an occurrence in Miami. And the practice was listed as the July 29, 2023 Scam of the Day” on scam expert Steve Weisman‘s Scamicide website.
Weisman advises, “A good rule to follow is not to order any food from a restaurant that puts flyers under the door of your hotel or motel room and don’t trust a room service menu that has been slid under your door. In regard to the pizza parlor or other restaurant, you can confirm online or even with a quick call to the clerk at the front desk.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to Gaytan via email for further comment.
