Passport scam - do not send anyone a copy of your passport
Posted: Thu Apr 01, 2010 7:15 am
The scam: in the process of taking a booking you are asked by the renter to send a copy of your passport ID page. He has sent you his passport details and his English is perfect so you go ahead. Together with your bank details which you have sent him, he now has everything he needs to empty your bank account.
I received this email from a rental owner, who narrowly avoided this scam:
I received this email from a rental owner, who narrowly avoided this scam:
We received an enquiry from an 'English' name and the English within the email was perfect.
The enquiry went backwards and forwards for a few emails with general questions such as 'Do you allow guests to smoke in the villa' etc - it all seemed perfectly normal.
He then said he would book the villa and I sent a booking form - we ask for payment by bank transfer into either an English account in sterling or a euro account in our Spanish bank.
He then sent a copy of his passport and asked if we could do the same - immediately alarm bells rang
Fortunately I was in Spain at the time so I visited our bank and asked them to put a warning on our account, and also rang our English bank to do the same.
2 days later the Spanish bank rang me to say that a gentleman had rung pretending to be my husband saying he was stuck in an airport and desperately needed some money transferring into another account. As I had warned them of the problem they did not allow him to do anything.
However - they warned me that if the gentleman had received anything with our signature on it he could have sent a fax to the bank to request a transfer which would have been carried out if the signature was valid !!!!
I would recommend that 2 bank accounts are set up and as soon as the money is received into the account immediately transfer it into the other account - even if they tried to make a transfer there then wouldn't be any money in the account to steal.
In addition NEVER send a copy of your passport to anybody - and don't sign your contracts etc.
Fortunately (or unfortunately which ever way you look at it) we have experienced identity theft in the past which involved a stolen passport in my husbands name so I was immediately suspicious of the request - other people may not realise that your passport has nearly everything on it to commit a scam.