Thousands lose millions in crafty travel scams

Scammers get more sophisticated, but request for gift cards is a giveaway.

A woman in Missouri booked a hotel through Booking.com. But when she realized she had booked the incorrect date, she did a Google search for the website’s customer service line, and that’s where things went wrong.

The woman found a number that appeared to be legitimate. The customer service representative instructed her to pay for the hotel with prepaid gift cards. She sent $120, and before she knew it, the money had disappeared.

“Obviously, we know she was not talking to Booking.com,” says Amy Nofziger, director of fraud victim support at AARP, which got more than 70,000 calls last year from people who lost money to scams, including the Missouri woman.

Criminals are always looking for opportunities to defraud travelers. Knowing the warning signs can protect you.

Gift card fraud

Nofziger says scammers place ads to game the search engine, producing results that look like legitimate travel websites. They’ll then ask unsuspecting customers to pay with prepaid gift cards from iTunes, Amazon or Google Play. That’s a huge red flag.

“The thing to do is verify you’re on the website you want to be on,” she advises. “(Booking.com) isn’t going to ask for prepaid gift cards.”

Retail stores that sell prepaid gift cards train their employees to recognize signs of fraud, according to AARP.

Scammers like gift cards because they’re untraceable and untrackable.

Credit cards usually offer the best protection from fraud, she adds.

Overseas scams

Travel-related scams can cost consumers as little as a few hundred dollars or as much as hundreds of thousands. Though older Americans often fall victim to these schemes, it can happen to younger people as well. And travel fraud has become a global enterprise.

“It’s all over the world,” laments Yolanda Parra, director of American citizen services at the U.S. State Department in Washington. “It’s not just coming from one region.”

The FBI says Americans reported $362 million lost to overseas scams in 2018, up from $211 million in 2017.

Parra says the damage from most scams falls into the $3,000-to-$5,000 range, but she’s seen some cases reach as high as $300,000 to $400,000.

“There’s a lot of money leaving our country,” she notes.

There are romance scams on dating sites, where a person will pull at the heartstrings of a prospective target, claiming to be injured or sick and in urgent need of money. Or they might say they’re a member of the U.S. military and they need money to get back to a base or travel to the United States.

Other overseas schemes target older Americans, with scammers pretending to be their children or grandchildren or claiming they are contacting the seniors on the relative’s behalf.

Of course, it is all lies.