Fake guest profile scam

[Ryan2309]

Recently we had a guest instant book one of our listings. They had four 5-star reviews and a local phone number. The only thing that stuck out as odd was the location was “Usa, Japan”. The guest had a Japanese name so we assumed maybe that meant dual citizenship or something. 

Fast forward to yesterday (the day of the booking) and a family member saw an ad on a Snapchat story for a “Airbnb party” at our listing. The post was even going as far as listing the cover charge for getting in. We called the number on the booking and it was extremely obvious the person on the other end was not the person that made the booking and they admitted to the party they were about to try to host. They ended up posting a cancellation for the party after being confronted.

After consulting with Airbnb they said that since the guest hadn’t violated any Airbnb rules they couldn’t do anything. They basically said the guest would have to actually throw the party first before they could do anything and that we still would be responsible if we cancelled them (which would harm our super host status and business).

1. How was this profile generated? It was pretty obvious this profile was either hacked or purchased. How did Airbnb not detect this themselves? I had to rely on an 18-year old cousin on Snapchat to detect this fraudulent activity?

2. How does this not break any rules for Airbnb? This clearly does not align with their strict stance against parties. 

Any helpful advice here would be appreciated. I’m basically powerless to filter something like this out given the tools Airbnb has provided me with as a host and could have had some serious damage to my business.  

[Christine615]

Try tagging @CatherinePowell about this (might have to go to the community update thread). This is pretty egregious and speaks to our complaints that Airbnb doesn't do even a modest amount of data collection before sending bogus guests to hosts. This guest should be banned and geotagged because they just start new accounts when booted.

It's hard to filter. So many of us ask a lot of questions, then make it clear no parties are allowed and that we will call police. Also - put cameras on your exterior. We use Blink and Ring on ours, but Blink doesn't have an annual subscription to keep the videos and the batteries last a long time. Unfortunately both are owned by Amazon so hosts may have other suggestions. But we got a multi-camera deal at Costco and Home Shopping Network (also have them at Kohl's etc.) for not much cost.

The majority of guests are wonderful. But lord, the bad ones make it hard on hosts.