McAvoy’s £10k holiday con alert
JAMES McAvoy yesterday warned fans to beware of a holiday scam after he was nearly conned out of £10,000.
The Glasgow-born X-Men and Wanted star alerted his 1.6million Instagram followers to a fake hotel website in a bid to prevent anyone falling victim to the fraudsters.
McAvoy, 39, told how he was moments from booking what he believed to be a family break at Tenerife’s five-star Ritz-Carlton Abama resort.
But fearing the deal was ‘too good to be true’, he checked with a travel agent – and was told he was using a fake site.
The deal on www.ritz abamatenerife.com ‘was a tenth of the price it should have been’, McAvoy said.
In a video on the social media site, the star shows a picture of the fake website and says: ‘Don’t use them. They nearly took ten grand off me, which is a ton of money.
‘Some guy has been emailing me back and forth and I nearly made a bank transfer.’
He adds: ‘It’s extremely convincing... stay away.’
In a second video, McAvoy – who is dating American production assistant Lisa Liberati – says the fake site asks for a copy of your passport ID page, and offers a discount to urge users to make bank transfers.
The star also shared images of his email exchange with a site ‘agent’. He urged fans to contact him if they had been victims of the scam.
A Ritz-Carlton spokesman said: ‘We are now aware because he alerted us.
‘We have asked to shut down the site and an investigation is under way.’