You might recognise the title of this article as a quote from an eighties hit TV series. As a holiday home owner, we are not saying you could face the same dangers as the officers in Hill Street Blues but all the same you do have to be careful as there are some clever con artists out there trying to take your hard earned money. Here we give you an insight in to some of the practises and the signs to look out for from scam email enquiries.
The two most common aims of a ‘scammer’ are trying to gain as much information from you as possible, for identification fraud… and to act as a potential renter who would like to pay for the pleasure of staying in your property in a rather convoluted way.
Arriving by email, these enquiries used to be written in poor English, sometimes using strange phrasing and a random cliché thrown in for good measure. But now the quality of the enquiry is getting better and it is becoming less obvious to immediately spot the bogus one.
What seems a normal enquiry can, after one or two emails going backwards and forwards, start to follow the classic route of asking you to receive a much larger sum than the rent charged for the period they require, by cheque… and then asking you to forward the difference to a third party via Western Union. The payment information takes on a form similar to the following:
Dear ….
I have made arrangements for you to receive payment from my employers in the USA which you will receive next week. It will be drawn on a cashier’s cheque and it is going to be for $5200. When you receive the cheque please deduct your own money for the holiday accommodation and send the balance via Western Union to my agent in UK who will make reservations for my air tickets and car hire. Please let me know if you are able to do this so I can call and confirm with my agent in the UK.
We suggest that you do not entertain any such transactions as the probability is that you will be out of pocket. The cheque ‘appears’ to have been deposited into your account… you wire the difference in money and then your bank informs you that the cheque has indeed bounced. Don’t get caught!!
The other tack of this ‘opportunity seeker’ is for you to disclose as much information about yourself as possible – name, address, bank details etc. These requests can be quite obvious as the list of ‘requirements’ are normally included in an email to you. Again be careful as the approach for this information is getting cleverer and less obvious to spot.
If you want to share experiences or ask advice of other owners on an enquiry you receive, leave a comment here so we can all benefit from each other’s knowledge. Also check out the dedicated topic on scam email enquiries on the LayMyHat forum at www.laymyhat.com.
And remember… be careful out there.
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Thanks for you advice and the warning. As much as I think I would recoginse and therefore ignore/delete a scam straight away – when it comes to correspondence regarding rental of my villa, I think I would be more likely to assume it was all legit! I will be looking out for such a scam. Has anyone been approached by such a scammer re their rental?
Ref the query by travelingpippa, yes I have had a scam enquiry exactly like this one except it was from Canada.
The original enquiry seemed normal enough but when I responded, I got this full message about a company cheque and return the difference etc, etc. He rather gave the game away though by starting out as Frank Martins then on the second email became Martin Franks and the English in the second email was attrocious!
There are lots of other known scammers and methods listed on the Laymyhat forum
I have had several fake enquiries but not yet through my Independent owners site. Check if the email is direct to you personally if not don’t even open it.