You probably thought this was an article on how to avoid vacation rental scams. For that, you may wish to read this article. We’ve taken a different approach here — let’s see how easy it can be to either scam or be scammed …
For the criminal:
- Get yourself a few photos of a nice property. They are plentiful on the internet.
- Post a free online ad at Kijiji*, CraigsList*, etc. If you would like to get a bigger return, spend a couple hundred dollars listing the property on a popular vacation rental website because visitors think that these listings are actually verified (but they are not).
- Advertise a price that sounds almost too good to be true
- Wait for deposit checks to arrive from multiple guests all searching for a “hot deal” for a popular vacation destination
- Leave on your own vacation with the thousands of dollars you’ve just made with your minimal investment of a couple hundred dollars.
For the Guest:
- Search a popular vacation rental website for the perfect property, or find a deal on Kijiji*, CraigsList*, etc.
- Send payment in full to an unnamed/unverified individual
- Brag to family and friends about the “hot deal” you found for your fabulous vacation
- Arrive at your destination to find out the property does not exist, and there are 35 other families standing on the street with you who also booked the same property for the same dates. Why would you all have the same dates? Because it is easier and more profitable for a criminal to pull off this scam during busy holidays on which rates are the highest and many properties become sold out making visitors desperate to find a good deal for their dream holiday.
- Realize that your money is long gone; you have nowhere to stay on a holiday (if you find a place available, it will be at a much higher rate than you want to pay); and it is unlikely that the police will ever be able to recover your money from some guy using a hotmail/gmail/yahoo email. Most people will not even report this crime to the police because they are too ashamed to admit that they should have known better.
*Some legitimate companies (ourselves included) will post Last Minute Deals on free sites like Kijiji and CraigsList. However, no legitimate company would use these free sites as their sole source of advertising. If you found a property on a free site, be sure to verify that it exists elsewhere.