Just Been Scammed - Rental of Villa Fraud

cheneslieges132

I have just been very cleverly scammed. I booked a Rental Villa in France. But someone had infiltrated the email and the website of the Owner (which was on the HomeAway Rentals website) and although I thought I was dealing with the Owner's Accountant/Partner, in fact the Owner turned out to know NOTHING about this person using her website and details. I have lost nearly £1300 (the 30% Deposit for the Villa plus the £1000 Damage Caution, which I was told had to be paid upfront). The Scammer supplied many replies to all my emails, until the money had been transferred to the Bank Account he specified. All the Forms supplied to me looked totally genuine, and had the "Logo" and the full address of HomeAway Rentals.co.uk - there was nothing to suggest that this was not all coming from the genuine Owner. I have since spoken to the Owner many times on the telephone, and she knows nothing of the person masquerading as her Business Partner. I have now got her to close down her email account and use a new email address. She has supplied me with her own personal Bank Account, in case I ever get any of my money back, and am then able to re-book with her, the genuine Owner. I did everything "by the book" according to Martin's warnings - but if a website has been "hacked into", as in my case, how could one ever know it is not genuine? I am devastated.
The Owner is French, and does not speak any English at all, therefore telephone conversations are very difficult- even though I speak some French, I am not totally fluent, so this makes life very hard at present. I don't think I will ever trust anyone ever again. I am 75 years old - and this is a huge amount of money to lose, apart from making me feel very stupid. But how was I to know this was a scam??? It all looked perfectly normal and convincing.

Moto2

It's a real shame that people get scammed out of their holiday money and I really feel for you, it sounds like it was a well executed scam and certainly nothing to feel stupid about.

The lesson for all is don't pay anything you cant afford to lose via bank transfer, simply refuse. Owners will then be forced to use more secure methods.

zagfles

Yes it's never a good idea to pay up front by bank transfer unless you know and completely trust who you're paying. Credit card is the only safe way, if they don't take them I'd insist on payment on arrival with no deposit, or I'd find somewhere else.

Have you reported it to the police?

Thanks for the warning - hopefully it'll stop others being conned.

cheneslieges132

Thank you to those who have responded to my tale of woe. And yes, we have entered the whole sorry saga on the Police Internet Fraud website, "actionfraud" - we also notified the HomeAway head office, both our own Bank and the Barclays Bank to which we were told to send the money. HomeAway told us that they are contacting their counterpart in France - Abritel - in Marseille, their head office. We await developments - but without much hope of restitution, I'm afraid.

littlereddevil

What an awful thing to happen

surreybabe

Stay away from VRBO. Unfortunately this has happened to me today using VRBO.com. It appears that my enquiry email was intercepted and the many replies I had fake. After googling the rental property, the fake owners address, searching the internet to see if the email address was recognised for anything, checking the bank sort code was for the bank address I had been given, I transferred the money yesterday, over £2000, and then realised when I finally got a reply from the real owner to my initial enquiry that I had been scammed. My bank was absolutely no help or the recipients bank either. I too reported it to Action Fraud who informed me they act to gather the info for the police but it may take up to 5 weeks for the police to reply and decide if they have a case to pursue!
The real owner of the property told me that she had someone else two weeks ago from Germany who had received false emails from her account but no money was sent as her bank told her it was a scam! She contacted VRBO and informed them, changed her log in details and thought that she had sorted the problem. If you search the web for VRBO scams the internet is full of them.
No chance of getting the money back and have lost faith in people at the moment.

buglawton

Even Paypal is a better option than bank transfer. No villa owner can have an excuse for not taking the retention deposit via Paypal.