Tour operators, do you fall for this daily bait?
21. Aug, 2009
7 Comments
I’m interested to find out if any tour operator is ever tempted to consider doing business with such obvious fraudsters, as per below email received on Tuesday:
Greetings
My name is Frank Spencer. I am writing this on behalf of my Greek friends who will be coming into the country for holiday. This will also be their first visit and will need a tour itinerary for 2 weeks. We will be 6 in number (adults) and would love to have an itinerary to include sightseeing , attractions, etc. ( Hotel accommodation in any 3 or 4 star hotel). 7 single rooms or 3 double rooms with a single room will be ok.
I am a very busy person and will soon be leaving for Iran on a business trip. In order to fully secure the booking with you I will make a deposit of £1,000 via my credit card details before I leave. This will done as soon as I receive the tour program/itinerary for the 2 weeks and the cost acceptable by us.
Date: 12th October, 2009 to 26th November 2009.
For your information, my friends do not speak English and would need an interpreter. I made an arrangement with a Linguist who would be able to translate every word to my Greek friends that do not speak English language. I have arranged this with a linguist who is willing to undertake these responsibilities on our behalf. He would be with them throughout our stay with you.
I hope you have a credit card machine/PoS in your office? So confirm this and provide me with your
Your Full Name:…….
Contact address:…………..
Phone number(s)………
Note: Please kindly send your reply to this email ( NOT as an attachment)
Regards
Frank Spencer
18 Brunswick Sq.
Broad Street
Birmingham
C7 7HW
UK
Phone: +44 701-112-1989
My name is Muzi Mohale a full-time travel blogger, your host at Travelwires.com responsible for all editorial on this blog. I blog about the travel and tourism industry in Africa. Apart from blogging about tourism, I also run 
Beside these kind of emails there are also emails around for e.g. wedding planners. I am receiving at least one such an email every week.
We receive about 10-15 per day. The 1st one I received this morning was for a group of 15 people in business class from Accra to Johannesburg. I feel so sorry for anyone who falls for this trap. It is also strange that all these e-mails seems to come from people who is staying in the UK. Or is that the new name for Nigeria (LOL)
These guys are rather creative.
Our first one this morning was a group of 7 Roman Orthodox Priests visiting your city.
Now not to sure whether they know my city is Durban and being 7 Hare Krishna munks it might have been a bit more convincing.
They come in all guises – and its always from a Dr., Professor or “honourable” something or other. They obviously think we are very dumb here in sunny SA.
Gibela – love the comment about the Hare Krishna monks – ha ha!!
These guys are a serious pain and because of human stupidity/ignorance, they’re able to trick a few of tourism operators and vanish into thin air with their hard earned cash. Even today, they still use the trap about overpayments and demanding a refund…
Muzi Mohale´s last blog ..Tour operators, do you fall for this daily bait?
we get it sometimes too and the minute they mention money that they are willing to deposit and mentione credit cards, without even knowing rates etc: we know its a spam!! we have to be alert these days…
Muzi, this practise started about 3 years ago. And “yes” people do fall for it.
In those early days a consultant in my office dealt with a booking of sponsored delegates to “The Pan-African Anti-Corruption Conference”, which was happening in Swaziland. For the first few mails it was all about ground-handling, which is what we do. At the last moment it switched to flight tickets. I remember the consultant approaching me to say, “We need to package flight tickets with this, or we’ll loose all the business”. I was busy and told her to check carefully and then proceed if she was happy. She checked. It was a purported NGO (we work a lot with NGO’s) – she checked their website, checked their telephone number by calling and talking to someone, got copies of passports, front and back of credit cards and even bank authorisation for the cards. Then she bought flight tickets for them.
It was a scam and we lost almost R90 000.00. This felt like a very well-targeted scam based around an actual event in area of operation. Most that come around these days are real mass-mailers and easy to see through.
Interestingly – the same NGO name and contact details still comes around from time to time with similar but less well-targeted scams. Same guys doing the same thing.
Lessons:
1. These fraudsters focus on greed. Which is why they offer money upfront. Our consultant was performance assessed and driven to meet certain targets. This group booking would have looked good on her evaluation.
2. Bank authorisation means nothing if it is a “card not present” transaction… and it says so in the merchant agreement that you sign with them. Taking credit card payments over the internet or by fax is entirely your own risk, even if you phone in and get an authorisation reference number.
3. The card division departments that deal with queries/fraud are worse than useless and this contributes to this ongoing fraud. They couldn’t assist us meaningfully when the fraud was detected (“Let’s wait and see if it is fraud or not?”), they couldn’t assist us to lay a charge with the Police, they couldn’t produce details of the queries they got on the credit cards used fraudently, they couldn’t even write a letter to say we had been defrauded so as to appease our auditors. All they could do is get our local branch to return a copy of our merchant agreement (signed 9 years before…and a copy never returned to us) which states they had full right to reverse the transaction even after authorisation is given. Which they did.
4. Learn from others mistakes… and don’t laugh. Staff turnover is high, and one day you may have an inspired individual in your office who is driven to perform and doesn’t have ability to see the warning signs.
If you are wondering how the fraudsters actually make money, my understanding is that they cancel the flight tickets, claiming any refund that they can. One would think this is a fairly easy fraud process to monitor, collect data and then pounce on through international police co-operation… but when the credit card issuing banks have little interest or incentive in stamping this crime out… it will just continue.