VBRO/Home Away Scams Article

[PatrickMcc]

This mornings Boston Globe has a story about these scams on page B10 by Christopher Elliot. I have seen this scam discussed on this board but the story adds some important details. The scam begins when someone steals the e-mail password of a villa owner and collects the money for the rental from an unsuspecting renter. The story makes it appear that Home Away (which owns VBRO)
isn't doing enough to stop this (they deny that) but more interesting is that Home Away pressures the owners of the villa to settle with the renters who have been defrauded. Apparently they do not have insurance to cover these losses. If you don't have the Globe possibly you can find the story online. I thought that people on this board might be interested.

[CBama]

I found it online


http://bostonglobe.com/business/2012/04 ... story.html

[PatrickMcc]

Thanks CBAMA. I'm not adept enough at the technology to add a link yet.

[CBama]

It's easy...when you have the website up on your screen, right click on URL in the address bar, choose copy, then go back to your post in forum and right click again inside you post, and choose paste. hit enter after the link to make it appear as a "clickable url"

hope that makes sense...

[PatrickMcc]

Thanks- I tried it and it worked. I have your directions written down for future use.

[PatrickMcc]

Thanks- I tried it and it worked. I have your directions written down for future use.

[pnoeric]

Interesting story; thank you for sharing! I think it's important to mention that the big takeaway is that people were scammed into paying by wire transfer, which is basically a one-way cash deposit that can't easily be traced or revered. It also didn't help that the example in the story is of an international wire transfer (from the U.S. to France), which makes it that much harder to sort things out when there's a problem.