These are the villas two families booked and paid for online. Only one problem: they don’t exist
‘We found out it was fake with hours to go’ ‘I sat there sobbing, it was all my fault’
ANN Sizer’S three young children were so excited about going on holiday the following morning that getting them into bed was a challenge. From how big the beach would be, to who would get the window seat on the plane, their questions were endless.
This was the family’s first foreign holiday, a delay caused by the fact that Cooper, seven, had spent years suffering ill health after contracting meningitis as a baby and then developing a serious brain condition. But he had been given the all-clear to travel, and he and his siblings, Jasmine, nine, and twin brother Logan, were thrilled.
For such a milestone, Ann had combed the internet for villas in Tenerife. After typing ‘villas and Canary islands’ into Google, she browsed before plumping for the company the search engine placed at the top of the list: Luxury Canarian rentals.
When you search on Google, it orders results by what it believes to be the most useful and relevant. A website’s rank has become a common barometer for how high-quality or trustworthy a company is.
Little wonder, then, that, after an email exchange with the website’s staff, Ann, a 39-year-old Pr director, felt content as she transferred £6,000 via BACS direct to the villa owners for her two-week holiday.
it was quite a sum — but the Sizers, who planned to holiday with friends, were getting a six-bedroom luxury villa along the prestigious Costa Adeje coastline, which purported to have an indoor cinema, games room and pool.
When the children settled for the night, Ann chatted to her husband Lucas, 41, who works in telecommunications, telling him she couldn’t help but feel nervous about their poorly son’s first flight.
Would the air pressure cause him discomfort, or exacerbate the swelling on his brain left from years of illness?
Lucas suggested they contact the villa’s owners to check everything was ready for their arrival.
Sadly, despite their planning — which even extended to checking how far the villa was from the nearest hospital in case Cooper took a turn for the worse — the couple were about to discover they had fallen victim to a breathtakingly cruel scam.
The website was fake, created by fraudsters, advertising a villa that didn’t even exist. Ann and Lucas, who live near Torquay, in Devon, had been taken in by highly sophisticated criminals.
They’re not alone. in the past year, there has been a surge in the number of bogus travel websites selling phantom holidays. Almost 6,000 unsuspecting Britons fell foul of such con artists in the past 12 months alone — an increase of 20 per cent in a single year.
it’s an almost inevitable consequence of our reliance on the internet to book holidays where once we would have used travel agents.
The Sizers began to realise something was amiss only when they tried to contact the mobile number on the travel website they had booked with and found it was no longer in use.
Their suspicions were confirmed when, for the first time, Ann began to search the internet for the name of the supposed travel company, Luxury Canarian rentals, and found, to her horror, dozens of reviews saying it was fake. An intelligent woman, she couldn’t believe she had been hoodwinked so thoroughly.
For as well as placing her implicit trust in the Google ranking system, she had checked the website, which has now been taken down, had the logo of travel association organisation ABTA.
But that was fake, too — as were the website’s reviews on how wonderful the villa was.
The website even offered travellers detailed payment protection advice. No wonder she was taken in.
‘it came up top of all the search results on Google and the website looked professional. The villa looked perfect and it was near a hospital, which was essential.’
But the more she investigated, the more apparent it became that the website was a horrible mirage.
She discovered the professional looking images which accompanied the website’s list of staff were stolen from other sites — one supposed travel advisor was a professor from Switzerland. Another was a U.S. weather presenter.
As for the images of the property itself? Also stolen, from other websites of legitimate holiday properties.
Horrifyingly, Ann had also sent copies of the family’s passports to the criminals, leaving them exposed to identity theft.
As she had paid with a bank transfer not a credit card, she knew there was little chance of getting her money back. To compound her misery, they had only hours to go until they had to be at the airport.
Ann says: ‘ i sat there, sobbing. it was my fault. i had booked it and we’d lost all that money. The kids were expecting to go on holiday in the morning. i felt so guilty and humiliated.’
Now late on Boxing Day last year, the couple struggled to raise any official who might be able to help — such as their insurance company or bank. But Ann was determined to salvage their holiday. ‘i did a lot of crying, then i pulled it together. i resolved my family would have the holiday they deserved.
‘i started to search for other villas. i also posted on my Facebook page if anyone knew of somewhere we could stay in Tenerife. Our flights were booked, so we just needed somewhere to stay.’
A friend got in touch who owned an empty property on the island — although they had to pay £1,000 on top of the money they had lost.
But Ann was relieved: ‘The villa was lovely. it was a bit of a squash as it had fewer bedrooms, but it was fine, and we managed to celebrate New Year’s eve together.’
The Sizers say they were the lucky ones, for when they landed in Tenerife, they saw three other families at the airport who had all booked with the same fraudulent company.
‘We had all come off the same flight. i could hear them looking for someone to meet them, as you were supposed to get a free transfer to your accommodation.
‘One of them had a baby in her arms; another family had a teenager in a wheelchair. i went over to say we had been victims of the same scam. They were in disbelief.’
The Hoopers are another family who trusted the prominence of Luxury Canarian rentals on Google. They typed in ‘villa’ and ‘Lanzarote’ and booked a villa on the island for New Year 2017.
But it wasn’t until Nicky, 49, ralph, 58, and their children, Josh, 11, and elliot, nine, landed on the Spanish island that they found out they had nowhere to go.
Nicky, who owns a boutique clothing store near their home in Brighton, had booked a week-long £3,000 stay at a luxury property.
expecting to be met by a holiday rep and driven to their villa, instead they were stranded at the airport.
‘i asked people at the airline desk if they knew about this and they said there were 15 families the day before who had also been taken in. i felt sick and the children wept.’
Like Ann, she’d paid by BACS transfer — and was not covered against fraud, as such payments withdraw funds from your account the moment you make them.
‘We’ve booked online before and the website looked genuine. it came up as the number one search on Google,’ says Nicky. ‘We had a booking confirmation and emails back and forth with the property manager.
‘ We’re trying to get our money back. it’s been reported to police, we’ve told Google and are talking to our bank and insurance company. But nothing has happened. it’s really frustrating.’
The family found a hotel for the night but, as everywhere was booked over New Year’s eve, they had to rearrange flights and come home early
at an extra cost of £2,000. Nicky says: ‘I can’t believe there isn’t more to protect people from this. All these fraudsters do is rip people off, and when the authorities are onto them, they just set up under a different company name.’
Cyber security consultant Kevin Wharram says: ‘Internet fraud like this is on the rise, but the authorities are completely overwhelmed.
‘While Google does not have the power to take websites down — for that, you need to contact the website’s host — they do have the power to remove the website from their search results. They have a lot of money and should invest in raising security awareness and making sure bogus sites are removed as quickly as possible.’
So how does a con website end up at the top of Google’s search results? Kevin says Google prioritises its results using a complex algorithm that takes into account hundreds of factors, such as keywords and site speed.
The rankings, therefore, are determined by the algorithm — meaning we should all be more wary of trusting what we find online, as criminals are able to manipulate this process to ensure their phantom holiday websites come out on top. So what can be done to make sure you book a genuine holiday?
Tony Neat, of fraud prevention group Get Safe Online, says: ‘Always try to book a holiday using a credit or debit card if possible, as they provide added protection in the case of fraud, although with small property owners this isn’t always possible.
‘Do lots of checks online — are there any reviews of where you’re staying? Do they sound genuine?
‘Always get the address of any rental property so you can look on Google Earth and see if it matches the description given. And if you become a victim, be sure to report it to Action Fraud, the national reporting centre for this offence.’
A Google spokesman says: ‘We do not allow fraudulent or misrepresentative sites. If we discover sites that are breaking this policy, we quickly take appropriate action.’
The statistics suggest this type of crime is on the rise. According to the City of London police’s National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, reported cases of this type of fraud have risen by a fifth in a year, to 5,826 in 2016. Kellie Butterworth is emotional as she recalls falling for a fake holiday after a Google search for a villa where her family could celebrate her mother’s 70th birthday in May this year.
Her guilt remains overwhelming because it wasn’t her money she lost but that of her parents Myrna and John, 67, who were keen to treat Kellie and her brother Nick, along with their families.
Kellie, 43, an advertising accounts director from Stockport, typed ‘villas and Tenerife’ into Google and was seduced by a website called Canarian Villa Rentals, at the top of the results list.
‘I go on websites all the time and know that when something isn’t user-friendly, it’s not proper,’ said Kellie. ‘But this was so easy to get around.’
Eventually, she chose a five-bedroom villa in Costa Adeje, Tenerife, and paid just under £2,000 for an eight-night stay via BACS transfer. Then, six weeks later, in December 2016, Kellie was chatting to her family about the holiday.
‘I said to my daughter: “Let’s look on the website,” ’ said Kellie. ‘But when I tried it, it was down.
‘Then I found a TripAdvisor forum discussion saying “This is a scam”. I tried to email the villa rental people and got a message saying: “This email address is no longer valid.” I cried for two weeks. It was meant to be a really special trip for us all to be together.
‘We had paid for the flights and had time to book another villa. But I felt such anxiety in the lead-up. I couldn’t help but think: “What happens if the villa is not there?” ’
Like the others, Kellie can only wish she hadn’t left the fate of her holiday — and money — in the hands of the first website which popped up on Google.