Lay My Hat

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.