Police called in to probe moriaraway.com travel swindle

Police in the UK are poised to assist in the investigation into a Spanish-based website which shut down last week having taken hundreds of bookings for non-existent villas.

The scale of the apparent scam - centred on a site called moriairaway.com - is still emerging after Timesonline broke news of the story on Tuesday.

We have since received emails from families and friends in the UK, Ireland, Holland, Belguim, France, Germany, Finland and Russia who have lost deposits or full payments.

At least 100 families in the UK are involved, with a similair number abroad. With bookings averaging £3,000, the final bill is expected to top £1m or more.

But with customers spread so widely, and having booked in a variety of ways, a coherent police investigation has yet to emerge from Spain.

Now, following representations from one of the UK websites that advertised the mythical villas on the Costa Brava, furious families trying to recover their money may have a localised point of contact.

Holidaylettings.co.uk is one of two major UK sites - along with Holiday-rentals.co.uk - that advertised morairaway.com villas but whose systems completely failed to pick up suspicious behaviour before the Spanish sites shut down and its owners disappeared. As a result 42 families lost their money.

A spokeswoman for Holidaylettings.co.uk said: "We have now met with and referred the case to the Thames Valley Police Economic Crime Unit who will be assessing the matter. We will continue to pass them any further information we gather or receive from affected holidaymakers."

The company has also admitted it is to review its own fraud prevention methods and tools - "with a view to enhance these and further reduce the chance of fraudulent advertisers and adverts getting online."

The company will also explore protection and indemnity against fraud through travel insurance.

UK-based customers booking with Holiday-rentals.co.uk are covered for fraud up to £3,300, although only the villa is insured - not the flights and car hire.

Yet the ease with which moriairaway.com and sister site denia-villas (and, it emerged today, another called IPuertobanus) were able to evade the two companies' security checks has raised widespread concern among holidaymakers and other internet-based referral sites.

A blog on holiday-home-rental.co.uk yesterday was entitled: "Morairaway Scandal – Time for a bonding product ?"

Author Rob Barham said today: "My advice is for people booking villas to be vigilant and ask for testimonials etc and also for holiday home owners to check out the "competition" in their local area and alert the rental directory websites of something suspicious.

"My opinion is that there is scope for consumer protection to be introduced in some way. The holiday rental directories need to come together to create one recognised scheme / badge as well as working together to ensure scammers are blocked from using all sites.

"As I wrote in the blogpost, my concern is that it just seems worryingly easy to setup a scam like this so there will be more."

Holidaymakers are also angry: Sarah Tatlow, whose family have lost £2,300, is threatening legal action against holidaylettings.co.uk.

Leonie Waardeloo. of The Netherlands, is also promising action against Holiday-rentals, whose fraud guarantee only applies in 4 of the 12 countries it operates in - and not Holland.

Both sites have stressed that it takes extensive manual and automated steps to try and spot fraud, including checking of 'moving' IP addresses and a series of other measures.

Said the spokeswoman for Holidaylettings.co.uk: "To put this situation in proportion to the 1.2m booking enquiries we will generate this year, we have had 42 holidaymakers affected by those behind morairaway.com.

"While we will continue to assess the need for holiday home letting to be regulated as the industry grows we are confident that better communication to and education of our holidaymakers, combined with increased investment in and development of fraud prevention will prove successful in better protecting consumers."

In a police statement to Timesonline, a spokesman confirmed they were looking to the case.

It said: "The Thames Valley Police Economic Crime Unit is currently assessing an alleged overseas holiday payment fraud to ascertain who has jurisdiction regarding the complaint and to that end, who the most appropriate law enforcement agency is to deal with the matter.

"As the investigation is on-going, it would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage.”