Airbnb fraud on the rise

It looked like the perfect Airbnb: spacious and light-filled with floor to ceiling windows, and just moments from Sydney’s Bondi Beach. The sharp white furniture had that sleek five-star look, as if every piece had been customdesigned. It seemed too good to be true. It was.

The six-bedroom ‘‘Bondi Beach luxury villa’’, listed at A$731 (NZ$780) a night for 12 people, was not in Bondi at all.

A quick Google reverse image search on the photos of the listing revealed that the luxe coastal pad was in fact in Florida, almost 15,000 kilometres away.

It is one of a growing number of fake house listings on the homesharing platform and other comparable sites.

In 2016 the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission recorded almost 200 complaints about fraudulent Airbnb listings, resulting in A$88,000 in Australian consumer losses.

Complaints last year had risen since 2015, when A$65,000 was reported lost to these scams.

ACCC deputy chairwoman Delia Rickard said consumers should never make a payment outside the official Airbnb website.

‘‘Any time you are asked to pay via a wire transfer or gift card, anything that is difficult to trace, that should tell you it’s a scam,’’ she said.

Rickard said home-sharing platforms such as Airbnb would be wise to conduct reverse Google image searches on property listings. ‘‘These image searches are one of the things we encourage dating sites to do on all profile pictures. We certainly encourage online booking sites to do something similar.’’

In the case of the Bondi ‘‘luxury villa’’, the first warning bells rang for this reporter upon reading the property’s description.

‘‘PLEASE do not book before you contact me! All the bookings made without prior contact will be canceled! [sic],’’ it read.

A response to a further inquiry stated that payment could be made through the Airbnb app, but not before personal details such as a full name, address, ID and utility bill had been provided.

In another example seen by Fairfax Media, an Australian consumer was also urged to email a property owner to make a booking, instead of using the app.

This led to the consumer mistakenly using a wire transfer service to send more than A$5000 to an identity masquerading as the property host of a European ski chalet, after receiving highly realistic emails purportedly from Airbnb. The consumer later discovered the property’s true address was in another country to that advertised.

An Airbnb Australia spokeswoman said its global Trust and Safety team ‘‘worked 24/7’’ to respond to issues raised by guests and hosts.

‘‘Airbnb will never ask you to pay the cost of a reservation off-site or through email. The bottom line is when you book a reservation through our secure platform, you receive the benefits of Airbnb’s global trust and safety team,’’ she said.

‘‘More than 150 million guests have had safe, positive experiences on Airbnb and negative incidents are extremely rare.

‘‘We proactively educate our new guests on the importance of keeping their bookings strictly on the Airbnb platform.’’

The home-sharing platform would not comment on how many fake property listing reports it had received in the past year, nor whether it conducted Google reverse image searches.

After being contacted by Fairfax Media, Airbnb removed the Bondi ‘‘luxury villa’’ listing and banned the relevant host. –Sydney Morning Herald

The consumer later discovered the property's true address was in another country to that advertised.