christian organisation scam

Post scam emails to warn other rental owners, or if you are not sure if an enquiry is genuine, put it up here and see what others think.
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ourinns
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Post by ourinns »

Be wary, because some of them are very, very good these days.

I also worry that I may come across as being suspicious to genuine clients and, more to the point, those with larger bookings who are more likely to look like a scam. For instance, only last week we received a call from a theatre group wanting to book the whole place for a couple of days. It sounded very much like a made up name to me and took quite a while to track them down online (it's a small group, hence no website).

Obviously you don't want to be taken in by a scam but on the other hand you can't really afford to put a genuine (if scam-like) booking off.

What I've started doing (where possible) is to track down the scammers and copy their e-mail to their ISP (mail abuse@theirisp.com) . If you've got their IP address you can do this via http://psacake.com/web/eg.asp among others. Depending on the ISP they've used, you can sometimes get a location too (so far all I've followed up have been in Nigeria).



Arnold
Mimmsy
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Post by Mimmsy »

On the other side of the coin we have recently received a run of quite genuine bookings that fit the normal scam profile in that they've used a yahoo.com address, been very large bookings and have had awful grammar.

That's the problem I had. I only realised it was genuine because I happened to get a call from the Cyprus Tourism Organisation regarding one of these bookings

The other worrying thing is that one scam that I received recently appeared to be just wanting to collect IBAN details and didn't involve the duff cheque + "refund" method that's been used up until now.


Exactly, which is why its not easy to determine if its a scam or not
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ourinns
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Post by ourinns »

Of course, if you're being really paranoid, how do you know that it was the Cyprus Tourist people who were actually calling you? I suspect that it is them this time, but the scams are definitely improving and it can only be a matter of time before they start going that one step further and call you up after sending the scam e-mail to "confirm" that it's genuine.

Actually, there was a thread a month or two ago ("bank account" or similar) where they got away with 10.000€ by acquiring the IBAN details from someone, calling their bank to confirm that a fax would be sent soon and then faxing the "authority" to transfer out the money. The bank is refusing to refund the money as they say that it was the posters husband who called - this is despite the signature not matching his or hers (it's going to court).

When giving out your IBAN, you should only give out an IBAN for a savings account for which you have specifically removed authorisation for fax transfers. This adds the protection that the big companies have in that it is the small-fry equivalent of a collection account (as you get on your electric bill etc.).


Arnold
Mimmsy
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Post by Mimmsy »

I was paranoid and looked up their number then called them up to check 8)
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ourinns
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Post by ourinns »

Top marks for security-awareness!

Seriously though, it's a dreadful situation when we've to do things like that, isn't it? OK, the bulk of scammers are still in the "send me money and I'll give you 10 times it back" league, but a growing proportion seem to be thinking through much more sophisticated ways of ripping us off.



Arnold
Mimmsy
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Post by Mimmsy »

There must be some way of protecting ourselves?
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ourinns
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Post by ourinns »

In theory, yes. But, as the scammers get more sophisticated it will get more difficult to distinguish the real from the scam and that's the real problem I think. Whilst we don't want to get caught out by scams, we also don't want to lose business.

To avoid the cheque scams, you could stop accepting foreign cheques but a number of people on this board are geared up to take foreign cheques from clients so that's not an option for them. I don't really know a way around that as it's far from clear when a foreign cheque is really cleared. For instance, I know that if it's genuine a French cheque will "clear" in my UK account in two weeks or so but when I forgot to sign one it was showing as "cleared" in the two weeks but came back over a month later.

The IBAN thing is easier - use a savings account so you're protected even if you give the details to a scammer.

I guess just trying to follow up the larger bookings is the way to go but that's not always easy and can be timeconsuming. Would you have had the time to call the tourist board in the middle of the summer for instance? I know that I'd have had problems taking the time to track down our theatre group in busy times.


Arnold
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