Holiday villa fraud that’s hit countless British families
You arrive at that dream villa to find the owner’s never heard of you — and you sent your cash to a chillingly plausible conman
accommodate them at a discounted rate, but at other times they have been stranded.’
Nick admits his frustration lies not with the website itself, but with the British police.
‘They’re just not interested,’ he says. ‘The criminals know that they can get away with it. One of my friends who owns a villa recently sent an email to the hacker saying he had reported them to the police and we were going to catch them. The hacker wrote back: “F**k you mate, we could be your worst nightmare.”
What’s more, it seems there is no way to find out where these emails originate from.
IT security expert Graham Cluley explains that it’s all too easy for hackers to keep their identity and location private. ‘ It’s trivial for criminals to hide their public IP address if they want to, making it much harder to track down where they might be in the world.
‘One typical method would be to leapfrog from compromised computer to compromised computer, and use someone else’s hijacked computer to access their email — hiding where the criminal is based. And many services online can help keep your identity and location private.’
The Mail has seen evidence of 28 fraudulent contracts sent out to different victims — from different ‘owners’ — all containing the same illegible signature.
‘These crimes are clearly executed in a manner that suggests organised criminal groups, but you’d need to be cautious about reaching a conclusion that it’s always the same group as methodologies are sold and traded within the criminal world,’ says a spokesman for Action Fraud.
A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police agrees: ‘ Our ongoing investigation suggests more than one organised crime group is carrying out these offences. We are investigating a number of offences and have identified various lines of inquiry.’
Action Fraud says consumers must try to protect themselves by speaking directly to the person renting the villa — and never pay directly into a bank account until they have verified the legitimacy of the owner.
Affected holidaymakers are also angry with Barclays bank. About 90 per cent of the victims who have contacted Beth King’s campaign have sent money to Barclays bank accounts.
Campaigners believe this is because other banks have tightened security in recent years, making it harder for hackers to set up bank accounts using foreign ID. So why can’t Barclays identify scammers from their accounts?
A Barclays spokesman says: ‘ We owe a duty of confidentiality to each of our customers. If we release information regarding these customers and their accounts without consent — or without a court order — Barclays is in breach of its duties.
‘ Where appropriate we share details of customers involved in fraudulent activity via an industrywide database to prevent further scams involving the same individuals. We also make reports to the National Crime Agency.
‘Barclays does not open accounts with dubious ID or inadequate verification.’ An Owners Direct spokesman says: ‘While the instances of fraud are extremely rare on our sites, we are always looking for ways to make the marketplace safer.’
In the meantime, more British
‘We thought we’d stumbled on a bargain’
holidaymakers are falling for the scam. Emilia Carslaw, 21, was one of 17 students from Jesus College, Oxford, who clubbed together to go on holiday. They found a villa in Spain and inquired about booking it for a week in July. The ‘owner’ got back to them almost immediately, saying that if they paid upfront, they could have a discount price.
‘The villa looked incredible,’ says Emilia, who is about to begin her fourth year of studying Classics. ‘It had a lovely pool, a volleyball court, an outside bar with beer on tap and even a football pitch.’
‘We each paid £188 and we were all so excited about going on holiday that we thought we’d stumbled on a really great bargain.’
But as the departure date grew nearer, the group realised something was wrong when the ‘owner’ suddenly went AWOL. Then the real owners, realising their email had been hacked, got in touch.
‘They had no record of our booking. We thought the holiday wouldn’t be happening and we’d lost all this money but, by stroke of luck, the villa was still available. The owners said it had happened before and must have felt sorry for us because they gave us a big discount.
‘It was incredibly kind. Owners Direct were also very helpful and offered us £800 compensation.
‘We didn’t need to take it because I paid by Mastercard, which provides insurance against this sort of thing, and they had already refunded us the entire amount.
Thankfully our holiday wasn’t ruined. We were so lucky to get it sorted out but other people might not have been so fortunate.’