I saw a press release where a hotel was outed. The hotel management claims did not know about the sting(s) going down. Do you all think that hotel is not telling the truth ?

The article mentioned that LE gave back he money to the johns who got busted. I never heard of that before, usually LE keeps the money.

It is SOP for LE to keep news of a sting operation to a minimum.

If they tell one person in the hotel, what's to stop that person from tipping off people he knows and from there a good part of their potential victims could be tipped off.

I agree about the money thing.  It doesn't add up.

but if LE had different motivations, they might not tell the Hotel.  Some hotels (or at least certain members of management) I'm certain know of the activity...  but choose not to do anything because it helps their occupancy rate.  
I've never heard of LE handing money back.