X-Posted for advice. There are a lot of scams here so any help people had would be great re: mitigating damages going forward.

Also think this is probably going to save someone from getting scammed if they read it as everyone seems to use Air BnB these days...

Mods delete if not appropriate.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/92.../#post42587536

Wow, pretty crazy. My advice would be to contact an attorney asap and see if you have any grounds to go after Barclays and/or airbnb especially if you think the e-mails were actually sent from them somehow.

Lawyers have been retained. Accounts were frozen etc.

Scam is here if you're interested:

http://www.scambook.com/report/view/181558/AirBNB-Leader-For-Welcoming-Fraud-Scams-Complaint-181558-for-$10,070.00

Posted more in the travel forum.

Not your every-day scam by any means for those inclined to believe it was and that they'd never fall for it.

I would fall for it again today, no questions asked, if I was making the booking if I hadn't fully understood what happened. It was/is very, very well done.

Also nice to read this

http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/03/...ype=blogs&_r=0

xposted from other thread as no idea if you're still active there:

airbnb makes it extremely hard for hosts and guests to exchange any kind of personal contact information.
this question has been asked numerous times and you haven't seemed to answer it (i'm not trying to pile on or blame you i'm just genuinely curious how the first contact was established outside of the site)

if you try to type in phone numbers or emails of any kind it blocks it out, so when they gave your wife the "assistants email" it must have been written in some elaborate code (i've seen it 1st hand when a shady host tried to get me to make a deal outside the airbnb interface and it was super obv shady as they did something crazy like use numbers to represent letters and alternate between spelling out whole words and inserting capitalized letters etc) making it abundantly clear they were trying to circumvent the filters.

can you please explain how it was that you went from communicating thru airbnb interface to communicating via personal email?

that is the key link in this "scam" that has not been clearly explained and one of the most important.

thanks, and good luck getting made whole.

see other thread.

they posted it on the pictures, which we requested - along with requesting to make it long-term.

Thanks for sharing revlis.

I've wired my rent to an emailed bank account. I didn't even google the account data to verify, so I was susceptible as well, in hind sight quite sloppy.

Always easy to say shouldve couldve later.



I've heard about some other advanced scams recently. This is becoming quite the big business. Incredibly hard to stop with anynomity and no international law enforcement.

My best advice is to search for everything. Google phone numbers before calling or accepting calls, google links before clicking them, google bank account numbers...

sorry to hear man, crazy stuff

Thank you.

It is scary. There's an implication on the Travel thread made by a number of trolls but also a number of what I believe to be legitimate posters essentially saying "you're dumb" but as I think you pointed out, it's simply not that simple when you are doing something to see every possible angle of every possible scam or arrangement. My wife is a great case-study here: She is, at the very least, a new user with above average intelligence. She is also extremely nitty with money, and this is easily the most money she has ever sent online. By many multiples. She didn't go through this process quickly. It took over a week. If she was fooled, and I'm honestly saying I would have been fooled as well, I'm simply warning that many, many others would be too. I think it's the vast majority. But whether it's 90% or 50% of 25% it's still scary, and way too much. If you're in the group that wouldn't be, that's all well and good. I wish you all the best and hope nothing bad ever happens to you like this. There are a lot of us in the other group as well, though. And that's a problem.

I must say that it's also not surprising that someone with as much poker success as yourself is self-aware enough and humble enough to realize that they aren't superman and do things in the moment that are, in retrospect after seeing the results, mistakes that coulda/woulda/shoulda been avoided.

It's possible the scammer was able to infer his email based on the info in the passport.

John Doe born March 19, 1975

doe@gmail.com
jdoe@gmail.com
johndoe@gmail.com
john.doe@gmail.com
jdoe75@gmail.com
jdoe319@gmail.com
johndoe75@gmail.com
etc.

that question is already answered in the other thread