Villa rental fraud

[shaz1967]

Yep that is really bad news Widge, have not a clue what to do if I was in such a position.
Interesting that Cash is exchanged for rental, do you get a proper receipt? Is the information taken on all renting the Villa, Passport, address etc.
The reason I ask is because a friend of mine was here last week, staying in an apartment in Luz and this is how the owner operates, absolutely nothing!
Reading the posts on this site, I thought this was the law.

Not sure how it works DVBRO, as I said we wont actually be staying with him as the dates were unavailable, also his establishment isn't a whole villa rental, its a number of apartments and rooms. I've no doubt everything is above board, he seemed to be a genuinely nice guy and was fairly booked up.[/quote]
We stayed with Luiz at Casa Luiz as we were in the process of buying our property & he is a very nice man & he is the type of guy who would offer helpful advice where he could & i think he ha sbeen there quite afew years, it was 8 years ago when we stayed at his place.

[shaz1967]

It is a sign of the times & also a terrible thing for these scammers to prey on good people who are booking a well earned holiday & i feel gutted for the person who fell victim to the vile scammers. We had a client last year who feel victim to the scammers & they were a little bit niave when sending payment to an account that was not in my name & was replying to an email account also not in my name. Luckily the lady in question managed to claim 80% of her loss from the booking company & w ediscounted her the other 20% so she was not out of pocket. If she had contacted us by telephone as we state on the web site she could have saved herself a lot of time & trouble. I think contacting the property owner by as many means as you can will eleminate a lot of prospective scammers & maybe also ask the property owner if they can contact previous renters etc. A lot of rental propertis have managers so if possible contacting them would be a useful exercise, in fact the more info you can gather the better.

[TomUK]

We have rented villas through Holiday Lettings. The first was perfectly safe because we knew the owners personally having met them a few times whilst there on holiday. We would have used their place regularly, but they sold it a few months later.
So then we went on Holiday Lettings to find an alternative for the next visit. We selected a place and paid the deposit via PayPal. Nobody yet has mentioned PayPal in this thread. Many advertisers use this facility. Am I correct in thinking that PayPal is a secure way of paying over the internet?
The next place was owned by a British couple and various e-mails back and forth with various details in reply to our questions led us to believe it was genuine. Deposit and balance paid by PayPal and enjoyed a good stay.
The next one was owned by Portuguese couple. Once again PayPal used. In e-mails we asked about the area it was in. We already knew the area and their answers about the various shops and bars tallied with our experience of the area, leaving us to believe they were genuine, and they were. They took a small deposit and the balance was paid in cash when we arrived. When we arrived there was a 5kg basket of oranges on the table and six bottles of Sagres in the fridge, plus a cake made by the owners wife.
I think the secret is to swap plenty of e-mails to build up a dialogue which, in our experience, gives you more confidence in the vendor's credibility.

[Maz&Stu2015]

Thanks Guys! We have heard from the owner so hopefully there wont be any hidden surprises when we get there. Interesting article!

[widge]

Extract from today's Telegraph, maybe this will weed out a few fraudsters and tax evaders.......


"Online sellers who use Ebay, holiday letting websites and other internet retailers will face one of the "biggest tax crackdowns in history" under government plans to obtain details of millions of online transactions.
HMRC wants to collect "bulk" information from internet companies to target thousands of people who fail to declare income they make online, costing the taxman billions of pounds every year.
The new powers will give the taxman access to information from Paypal, the online payment company owned by Ebay, smartphone app stores run by Apple and Google, holiday comparison websites and a host of other online retailers.
It means that thousands of Britons who let out their homes on the internet or sells good on eBay without paying tax will be targeted and have their affairs scrutinised."

[pato]

I wonder when the government will crack down on tradesmen who will only work for cash and don't issue receipts, the UK is now worse than Portugal,