Last week, a federal court sentenced a Baltimore-area former owner of a travel booking company to a year and a day in prison for operationalizing one of the oldest tricks in the corporate travel book — using IBM's rate code. It's been a half-joke in the travel industry for decades, but it's fraud, and some suppliers are trying to do something about it.
Stephen Fowlkes in August pleaded guilty to a felony wire fraud charge for using IBM's rate codes to make more than 2,000 rental car bookings with Enterprise, more . . .