I've only scanned this thread, but lol @ people acting as if most/nearly all people would sniff out such a scam. Many people by luck would have ended up not falling for it, and OP pretty much had the worst luck possible (namely (1) emailing the address on the image rather than continuing to use the messaging interface, and (2) extending the stay length after the original negotiation hence making a credit card transaction unusable). For instance, if this were just for $1,000 and they had been intent on bank wire instead of credit card, I probably would have said "F- this" due to the annoyance and frustration of sending a bank wire. But for a more substantial amount of money it seems reasonable.

Newsflash: people are dumb and off guard. People don't read instructions and they don't read user agreements. People wire people money in much stupider situations than this.

I know nothing about the Air BnB interface, but the site should beef its protocol up to be less easy to scam. For instance, all images sent back and forth in these direct-interface situations should be reviewed manually. Any listing that sends an email address in a photo should be sternly reprimanded/canceled.

Another thing some sites do is have "xyzxyz will never ask for personal details over email" sorts of messages at the bottom of every email, and generally pasted all over the place.

Seriously, banks and everything else have made their site far more scamproof over the years. Based on how easy this was to pull off, Air BnB really needs to do the same.

Sorry, OP, best of luck.

Has nobody, including revils who included the link in his OP, read the discussion underneath the report on scambook? Several people clearly state that when doing international bank transfers the name that is used is irrelevant. It is only the banking number that is checked. Therefore, Barclays did not open several accounts with the name xxxAirBnB.

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

I find it funny when he gets criticised or even attacked for falling for a sophisticated online scam by people who would never fall for anything yet can't even spell his nickname right.

OP, really sorry for the way you've been treated here. While many 2+2 users probably would not be able to fall for this, there are plenty of people in the world that would, and you guys are all victims here. It's amazing how many people here seem to take the line of 'the little old lady had it coming for being weak and naive". Common, OP was robbed out of a ton of money. It's a horrible situation and no matter how ignorant you think a person is to get to this point, it doesn't mean they deserve this kind of treatment.

Revils, can you give more info on what exactly is going on with the legal side of this? You are always talking about suing Barclays and airbnb, but is there no way for the authorities to be involved and to track down the actual thief here? I don't get it, that amount of money doesn't just fly around without a trail. Isn't there a way for them to find out who did this and put them in jail?

Presumably you have to prove that a crime has been committed and get some sort of court order to find out who controls the bank account that the funds were sent to. Unfortunately, it appears to be quite difficult to find a body that is willing to accept the crime as being under their jurisdiction.

I assume this was aimed at me as I misspelt his name in the previous post. I am not attacking revlis. But I am astonished that he is talking about Barclays being criminally negligent (or whatever) for allowing somebody to open a bank account with AirBnB in the name when it took me 5 minutes of reading the post that he had linked to discover that the scammers did not do this.

You are a ****ing piece of trash.

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I've been sick for the last few days.

I will respond to the thread when I'm feeling better.

Thank you for all of the support.

So this is the standard message window on Airbnb from a convo I had last year, which was my only time using Airbnb, and after which I actually felt a bit scammed from a randomly added $15 "1 night stay" charge and from getting a different unit than the one I responded to the ad about, which looked significantly worse (prob worst "kitchen" I've seen in my life), but was actually somehow listed at a higher price, leaving me not much of an option of getting money back on that part.

I think the main problem is that the Safety part is not explained at all and everything is written in a very matter of fact tone, without any serious warning about how people are trying to run scams.

For example in this case, a scammer could make up very reasonable things like "sorry the amount is so high that we prefer wire to avoid the high credit card fees" (which is common in the travel industry).

Compare this to Craigslist, which clearly says at the bottom of apartment ads says "Avoid scams, deal locally! DO NOT wire funds (e.g. Western Union), or buy/rent sight unseen".

Airbnb has numerous warnings and instructions posted prominently on its pages. The image you posted shows one such example where it clearly tells you both how to book an apartment and how to pay for it.

When you respond to a message within the site, you have this warning right below the box where you're typing:

And if you click on the "How do I pay?" link on the sidebar, you get this:

When I used the site, I actually felt that they were fairly over-the-top in warning against transacting off-site.

This scam only works if a person initiates an email conversation with the scammer and also does not use the Book It button -- a button which is prominent on the listing itself, and also in the emails you get when the host replies to you -- and then pays by wire transfer despite the site telling you that you'll pay by credit card or paypal. I don't really think that airbnb is negligent in any way in their attempts to warn against fraud. These are three separate actions which all go against what airbnb tells you to do. The warnings are right there in front of you even if you don't take the time to read all of the FAQ (which you of course should do whenever you're doing something with money). For example, if you read the FAQ you'll come across this:

Read the first few posts and skimmed the rest. Sorry this happened and thanks a lot for posting this. We all stand to benefit. Maybe it'd be useful to edit the first post to have CLIFFS on simple steps others can take to avoid the same scam?

CLIFFS: communicate only through the airbnb site. pay only through the airbnb site.

Thanks.

Yeah, actually people on here helped me figure out exactly what happened. As I wasn't the one clicking the buttons, it took me a bit of time to figure out the scam.

Here are the cliffs:

- We contact host with 4 positive reviews and "verification" and ask if their short-term rental can be made into a long-term rental (within the airbnb system). We have a long back and forth.

- Host eventually says that we should work out the details with her assistant, but provides us additional images. On the images is an e-mail address for the "assistant."

- We e-mail from our g-mail account to the "assistant" (as given in the images). This is the crucial part. This gives them our e-mail, to which they can start sending spoof e-mails that appear to be from Airbnb but aren't. This leads us to believe we are in fact operating within the system, but we aren't.

- The back and forths indicate that we should wire money to a bank account in the UK at Barclays that is ostensibly Airbnb but actually is "Fair Choice Air b n b" or something along those lines.

- We follow the instructions thinking it was the Airbnb escrow account.

- We get spoof emails that trickle in over the next week/10 days indicating that we had a confirmation #, the funds had been received, and giving us a receipt. This is to make sure we didn't realize anything was amiss. They are identical to what one would actually receive from Airbnb and from identical e-mail addresses.

- By the time we realize what happened, we had the bank accounts frozen and the $ was all gone.

- Scam has been going on with this exact bank for 2+ years and many people have been effected, but nothing has been done to stop it besides Airbnb complaining at high levels to Barclays.

I would add:

- Pay only with credit card (or debit card?) though I don't know if Debit Cards have the same insurance.

- Never, ever give out your e-mail for any reason and be conscious of the fact that once you do, you are subject to spoofed e-mail addresses sending you seemingly innocuous e-mails that aren't actually from Airbnb.

How did you get the additional images with the email in them?

They sent images through Airbnb with the e-mail written or typed onto the image.

We didn't think anything of it to be honest...

Haven't had time to read the whole thread, but if this hasn't been suggest before... call your bank and have them dispute the transaction. It can take several months for something like this (unless it's a credit card, that is usually instant) but banks are exceptionally good at claiming fraud money.

revlis87,
I'm writing an article for a prominent national magazine on AirBnB scams and would love to include your story. You wouldn't need to use your name. Possible to connect?

Can you post a link to your story?

I wish I found this forum a few weeks ago. I was naive enough to get scammed out of $2200 from someone claiming to rent through AirBnB. The fake AirBnB email they sent me even had a chat service, so I thought I was chatting with an AirBnB support agent, but I was really talking to the scammers.

What is the final word of advice for those of us who have gotten scammed? I've filed a claim with the FTC and I've contacted AirBnb. Should I contact my bank or the bank I wired the money to? I don't expect anything from AirBnB, and I highly doubt I'll ever get my money back, but I would like to help catch the people doing these scams.

you should absolutely contact your bank.
dunno if this is a large enough theft to interest the FBI but I think you should contact them as well.

Unrelated to OP:

My mother tried to reserve a place for the rest of my family (her and my 2 sisters) and she was rejected on a credit check due to "too many accounts".

However, they kept the reservation on airbnb and want cash on arrival rather than using a card. They sent an invoice with the amount owed (the apartment seems affiliated with a rental company rather than an individual user), but I am suspicious of dealing with payment outside of airbnb. The "host" of the place we rented has a lot of 5 star ratings, but that isn't reassuring when you're told to pay off-site in cash.

60 minutes might be interested too.

We have been scammed by airbnb - nothing to this degree - but it's enough that we rufuse to use them when we travel.

How the f..k can abnb allow that ? They should have a system to prevent that.