Airbnb fraud - advice needed

rtho782

Email is not secure anyway, anyone can put any address down as the sender - I could send you an email that purported to be from "Theresa.May@gov.uk". I'm not the prime minister.

You effectively gave your money away, and now want someone else to be liable, the only person you have a claim against is the fraudster.

eddddy

Francesca_Lynch wrote: »

it was originally listed on Airbnb and I have internet history to prove I viewed it here - the emails that were sent to me were from what I thought was airbnb - same designs layouts etc and their address came into my inbox as Airbnb but they were infact from the e-mail address "automated@property-booking-request.com". The links in the e-mails took you to website that looked exactly like airbnb and I even had what I thought was an online chat with Airbnb through them - but I now find that airbnb don't have live chat!!!!! I have booked apartments a number of times and this was a particularly good fraud!

It sounds like this guy came across the same scam: https://community.airbnb.com/t5/Community-Help/Scam-attempt/td-p/309352

So it sounds like the scammers got your email address and then 'socially engineered' you by sending you emails, with links to a fake website - which probably had a fake t&cs page and fake payment instructions.

How did the scammers get your email address? Did they ask you to email them? My understanding is that you would normally communicate with owners via Airbnb's messaging system - which strips out email addresses, if you try to include them.


FWIW, 'property-booking-request.com' was only registered on 19th Jan, and its owner is hidden behind a Panamanian privacy company: https://who.is/whois/property-booking-request.com

wrent.me (mentioned in the first link above) ownership is also hidden behind the same Panamanian company.

TBH, it sounds quite a sophisticated scam. It's difficult to see a way of getting your money back.

Majestic12

rtho782 wrote: »

Email is not secure anyway, anyone can put any address down as the sender - I could send you an email that purported to be from "Theresa.May@gov.uk". I'm not the prime minister.

You effectively gave your money away, and now want someone else to be liable, the only person you have a claim against is the fraudster.

I'm very disappointed that our Prime Minister is not gracing her presence on this forum. I feel misled