Fraudulent Bookings
We originally came to Spain thinking that we already had bookings lined up. I took two bookings for June 2005 and were told they were a travel agency who took commission for the booking....The two different companies sent me a Bankers Draft one from Abbey National, the other from Lloyds Bank. They told me to bank the cheque and pay their commission immediately via Western Union. I got suspicious when they started to hassle me for their commission...I told them I would not pay their commission until I had confirmation from the bank that the cheques had cleared. Both companies said that Bankers Drafts were "immediate clearance". I said I did not care and would still wait 5 days until I had confirmation from the bank....It was 3 days later I received a letter from the bank to say the
Abbey National and subsequently the Lloyds cheques bounced....I then worked with the bank and police writing emails to these people to try and "home in on them"! Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful....
Over the last twelve months I have recieved numerous fraudulent emails.
Fortunately for me, I know what I am looking for and immediately press "delete" on the emails.
The most common fraudulent emails come from yahoo.com and hotmail.com addresses.
They often pretend to be :
They are mainly group bookings and do not leave an address or legitimate telephone number. Also the dates are very varied going from 3 weeks to 3 months!
Basically if it sounds too good to be true for this area,
then the chances are it is a scam.