Otter steals £100,000 worth of koi carp from Chester hotel pond

A hotel has caught a "cheeky" otter stealing and eating more than £100,000 worth of koi carp from their garden pond.

The Grosvenor Pulford Hotel, near Chester, set up CCTV cameras after noticing the expensive fish, worth around £2,000 each, started to go missing.

Footage shared on social media shows the "gutsy guy" avoiding electric fences and plucking a carp from the water before escaping.

It is thought the sly otter has stolen around 50 fish from the hotel grounds, worth a staggering £100,000.

A hotel representative said: "This gutsy guy has been helping himself to the koi carp who call our grounds home, with around 30 koi plucked from the Asian Sensory Garden pond and a further 20 from our other pond - the otter cheek of it!

"As delighted as we are to be playing our part in the local eco-system, we (and the fish) can only hope that the assailant’s visits become at least bit less frequent as he’s racking up quite a bill.

"He’s accused of eating a whopping £100,000 worth of our fish."

The hotel says their grounds team "will continue to investigate"... but the culprit is still at large.