Heseltine’s heartbreak as scammers ruin holiday
HER fathER, who nearly became prime minister, has amassed a fortune of nearly £300million and lives in splendour at his 800-acre Northamptonshire estate.
But that doesn’t mean Lord heseltine’s elder daughter, annabel, is invulnerable to the sort of holiday horror that induces cold sweat and fist-clenching fury — and leaves the victim begging for help.
as a divorced, single mother who’d spent months locked down with her four children, magazine editor annabel wanted to treat them to a week in Cornwall before they returned to school. She was delighted when she found what she wanted — a beautiful house overlooking the beach in Newquay.
‘I thought, “how fabulous, how lucky — perfect for teenagers,” ’ says annabel, adding that her youngest child, Montgomery, has been unwell and off school for an entire year.
there was just one drawback. ‘It was very expensive — more than £3,000 for the week,’ she tells me, adding that she told the owner, who gave his name as henry McGee, she was going to think about it.
‘he pushed me quite hard,’ recalls annabel, who then had about ten emails from McGee and lettings agency homeaway as she sought further information.
Eventually, she agreed a price of £2,500 — in euros, as McGee requested — plus a £1,000 refundable deposit. ‘I was desperate to take the children away,’ adds annabel, whose marriage to surgeon Peter Butler ended in divorce two years ago.
the night before she and the children were due to go, she contacted homeaway again. ‘I was asking about the keys. they asked for the house ID.’ Only then did she realise that she’d been scammed.
‘I feel a complete fool,’ says annabel, who wants to alert others about the sophisticated fraud which made it appear everything was conducted through the homeaway website.
‘the house was in the line-up with all the others which are kosher,’ annabel explains. ‘there were 24 photos of the house on the homeaway site. these have now vanished.’
homeaway tells me this is a socalled ‘re-direct scam’, in which a criminal ‘illegally used the homeaway name, design and credibility’ to give the impression that the property was listed on the genuine site.
It’s no consolation for heseltine. ‘I told McGee how excited we were, and that my teenagers had had a difficult summer and how important this holiday was for us.’