SCAM ALERT – please tell your tenants and landlords

Hello
I read with interest the detail of the scam and was amazed to see ‘Mr Peacock’ appear again

We have had a scam who I think is possibly the same person.

In addition to our property portfolio in the UK we have 6 villas in Spain that we rent out as holiday lets.

We received an enquiry from a ‘Mr Peacock’ (by email as normal) who asked several questions that would appear to be normal in perfect English so there had been maybe 6 or 7 emails before he said yes please could he book the villa – we then sent the booking form which has the details of our bank account on it for payment. The first thing that made me suspicious was that he then asked if he could pay in euros and was there a euro account he could use – which I sent the information in case he was genuine.

He then sent a ‘copy’ of his passport and asked if he could have a copy of ours to prove that we existed and were not scammers !! I would not send the copy so he asked for a signed copy of the contract.

This immediately rang alarm bells and I rang both banks to explain we had a problem. (I had not sent the copy of the passport or signed contract but other people may not be aware of the scam)

The gentleman then rang our Spanish Bank and pretended to be stuck in an airport with no money and asked if they would make a transfer – as I had alerted the bank they said no – but the problem with Spanish Banks is that they do accept faxed details about transfers – Mr Peacock would have had all of the info he needed to get money from our account.

He would have been quite disappointed as we use 2 accounts – one to receive money and then immediately transfer it to another account to ensure this problem never happens.

Apparently this type of problem is not as easy with UK banks as they have more stringent rules about transfers etc. but it is a problem in Spain where they accept faxes.

We have been victims of fraud in the past where a false passport (with all of the correct details of my husband plus a picture of the fraudster !) was used in a branch of a bank to obtain money so I am more aware of the problem – most people do not realise how important it is not to give anybody a copy of their passport.

If you offer rentals abroad it is important not to give anybody your bank account information AND your signature - if they are unsure whether the property exists we send a sample of the deeds from the notary with our NIE numbers removed.

This scam was also rife a few years ago - beware!!

on this story i wonder if any of you check the mail to your properties i do and recently there has been a growing no of mail to the properties with names i do not recognise from banks and collection agencies ,we have invisible tenants with bank accounts and cards arriving , collection letters from services in fictitious names ,it takes a lot of time to deal with these individually ,the banks in the uk are a joke they open accounts for anybody without asking for tenant id like contract ,no person is allowed to open accounts without fixed aboad and tenants are allowing friends to open accounts using their addresses this is fraud , i will not allow this to happen because it gives my addresses a bad name , regards

Of course the other problem which is rife at present is the gentlemen with slightly foreign accents who call you from "Microsoft" claiming that there is a problem with your computer and, if you are fooled, then proceed to "help" you to remove this problem. The process will invariably involve the injection of some malware into your machine and the necessity to spend much money to remove same. Again, the older, lesser experienced who are being forced into the computer age by the necessity to have e-mail facilities are those who will be fooled by such a scam.

Hi Ian

One of my own family members actually fell for that scam.

Thanks for raising it.

Regards

Mark