Wow... came to Flyertalk forums expecting that I was going to be the only one who had points stolen and would need to start a new thread...

On Monday this week I logged on to IHG as I needed to book a couple of hotel nights in Canada... I immediately notice that 70,000 points had been redeemed...

What's amazing is that the points had been redeemed THAT SAME DAY and the reservation made, was for the following day!

Called IHG and eventually they determine that a booking has been made for a hotel in the UK that same night...

Obviously explain that it's nothing to do with me and IHG agent calls the UK hotel with me on the line - eventually, UK hotel staff confirm that "I" have already checked in, for the first of 2 nights...

Not sure what happened eventually (as hotel would not not tell me...), but IHG confirmed that the guest was "apprehended" the following day and made to pay for the two nights by credit card - IHG customer service were great and they managed to credit the 70,000 points the same day (they did not open a fraud investigation...).

Two questions:

1. I'm wondering if someone had really hacked into my account, or if it was a mistake in the IHG system that redeemed points from the wrong account ?

2. When I logged into the system on Monday and first noticed the points missing, I also noticed that the email address did not appear to have been changed and I certainly did not receive any kind of email confirmation, when the UK reservation was made (I even checked the junk mail folder).