Lay My Hat

>>Hi, This is Mr. Robert and Mrs. Linda Powell, We would like to book your accommodation for our coming holiday for a period of five Week.

Below are our Reservation details:
Arrival Date: 16th March 2019 Depart Date: 20th April 2019
Number of Nights: 35 Night Number of Guests: 2 Adult

Please Kindly get back to me with the availability of the accommodation and the total price of the booking for a couple for the period, I will be Looking forward to hearing from you with the details as soon as possible so that we can go ahead with the booking as soon as possible.

Best regards
Robert Powell

<<

This looks like a scam - return path is
<info@shoryukan.it>
and IP address
X-SenderIP: 207.244.100.146

Yes, it’s a scam. The new names are currently doing the rounds; the content is a common scam.

A big clue to any scam is the use of "your accommodation"* rather than naming your property.
*Also insert "your area".

I don't understand how the scam works. How do they make money out of it?

If you book them in, a very large cheque for more than the rental will arrive (for 'extras' such as taxis and excursions), you cash it and it appears to clear, they cancel, you send the money back to them and shortly afterwards and then the cheque bounces, as it was either stolen or fraudulent... leaving you out of pocket.

Ecosse wrote: you cash it and it appears to clear,

That’s the key to the scam, widely known as an “Overpayment Scam”. The cheque is normally drawn on a foreign bank; unlike a UK to UK bank transaction which is final after clearance, funds drawn against a foreign bank can be clawed back some weeks after they have shown in your account. During that time, having seen the funds in your account, you forward the overpayment to the criminal’s supposed “agent” who is organising an itinerary or whatever for the “guest”, or refund the “surplus” to the “guest" or his “accountant". Some time later the cheque, which was stolen or forged, will bounce and the bank will reclaim the money from you. Unfortunately the amount you’ve already paid the criminal is now lost at your own expense, and in the hands of the criminal gang.

For this current scam, if you’d responded this is the reply you’d have received:

My wife and I are both currently on a business trip to France and we
would be coming straight to your place from there, So we would like to
complete the reservation as soon as possible.

I have made an arrangement with our company Accountant to make
payment out to you for the full amount of our reservation via a bank
cheque. I will instruct my Accountant to issue the Bank cheque for
easy cashing at your bank. So I will like you to get back to me with
the information that will be needed for the cheque.

I will appreciate if you can get back to me with the following
information that will be needed to make the payment out to you so that
you can receive the payment as soon as possible:

Below is the information that will be needed from you for the bank Cheque:

Full Name on bank cheque :
Postal Address :
City:
Postal Code:
Country
Phone number/Cell phone:

I would be very glad if you can be of a helping hand, I will be
looking forward to reading back from you with the information needed

In fact the very first line of the original email:

Hi, This is Mr. Robert and Mrs. Linda Powell, We would like to book your accommodation for our coming holiday for a period of five Week.

has enough indicators (ignoring the names which change frequently) to be 99% certain it’s a scam, without reading any further - easy enough to recognise when you’ve seen them endless times, but probably not otherwise. Worth spending some time looking at example scam attempts on the forum. This one is fairly basic, some are far more sophisticated.
Well done for being suspicious!

PS - The return path that bears no resemblance to the sender’s name etc is one of the best indicators, as you noticed.

Another notable clue is:

Mazey wrote:...our coming holiday for a period of five Week....

The length of stay is probably somewhat longer than your usual customers.

The scammer does this to appear to you that the booking is worth pursuing but actually its to ensure that the total amount of the scam is worth his effort to do all the follow up stuff.

There's a school in the suburbs of Lagos offering bachelor's degree in scamming with textbooks containing pre-written email texts for students to copy/paste which is why they are so easy to spot.

Beware the scams that do not contain the magic keywords but aim for the same result!