Press Release: Source: MyVillaRenters

Travel Industry Becomes Aware of New Bank Cheque Scam
Monday December 6, 6:15 am ET

The scam, which is being used to target people selling items or services over the internet, has now also spread to the travel industry. Targeting individual property owners, fraudsters will pose as holidaymakers and send a cheque of far greater value than the price of the property's weekly rental. They will then arrange with the property owner to be reimbursed the extra money by electronic money transfer. However, the cheque the owners received is stolen and it can take several weeks for this to be discovered - by then the owner's refund has already been collected.

Tim Coulton, Managing Director of MyVillaRenters, comments: "The scam works by exploiting a fault in the UK payments system. Owners receive a cheque, bank it and are pleased to see the money pass into their account. It can take weeks for the banked cheque to be identified as stolen, by then the owner has reimbursed the fraudster for the phoney overpayment. The owner loses out because once the cheque is identified as stolen, the bank automatically takes back the money and the owner is liable for the loss."

Due to the fact that MyVillaRenters uses a debit/credit card system for payments none of its owners have fallen foul of this fraud. However, the vast majority of online holiday property rental companies require potential customers to send an email to the owners requesting availability and then a cheque to book the villa - thus leaving both customers and owners open to a huge number of problems and scams.

As a result, over the last seven months MyVillaRenters has been getting tens of owners joining the company each week, after being hit by this scam when hiring their villas through agencies that don't take payment via the web, or doing it themselves.

Visit www.myvillarenters.com for further information.