Beware the "Let's split the payment" scam

[Rich-and-Yan0]

Hi fellow hosts,

My wife and I are still relatively new hosts, just passing the 6-month mark about a week ago, but we have been following the hosting forums for much longer.

We have heard of various scams and scam attempts on Airbnb over the past few years, but this morning we were approached with what appears to be a new one--or at least, it was new to us. 

Basically, we got an email request for a long-term booking from this coming Tuesday, which seemed odd to us. Why, after all, would someone planning a long trip write on such short notice? The writer also claimed to be going on a business trip, which was another peculiarity. Our home is in the Algarve in southern Portugal, which is known for its climate, beaches and golfing--but not as a place people go on business trips. Even if they did, then we feel sure that they would have planned their trip more than three days in advance.

And then there was the language. Though the telephone number he secretly embedded in his mail was for an U.S. address in the state of New Jersey, his English (e.g. "Greetings. I am Alexander" and "But there is one moment that I would like to share with you") didn't sound like that of any American I've ever met.

Now here comes the really dodgy part: the writer claimed that he wasn't actually going to stay at our place, as he had a friend's house to stay at in Portugal but was getting paid by his company for accommodation costs. So, he said that if we were willing to accept his booking, then we could split the payment between us.

I'll post what he wrote at the end of this letter, but I'm sure that many of you are seeing "flags" already. Certainly we were.

So, I sent it on to a lawyer friend of mine who specialises in fraud, and she said that she has seen this recently and that it is a new variation on an old type of scam. Here's how it works. First, since it's low season and you don't have anyone booked, then you figure that it is a good deal for you and agree. Next, the person confirms the booking. After that, the guest asks you to transfer him half of the money for the booking. And then once the transfer to him is made--you guessed it--the guest cancels, and you are screwed. 

So that's it. And again, some of you hosts may have seen something like this before. But as I said, it was new to us, and so we thought that we should share it so that other hosts can be aware of it if it happens to them. 

The message he sent is pasted below. We would love to hear your thoughts. (Oh, and if anyone knows how we can report this to Airbnb, then please let us know.)

Rich & Yan

Greetings! I am Alexander. Soon I'm having a business trip to Portugal. I was looking through Airbnb to find some apartments there and would like to book your apartment. But there is one moment that I would like to share with you. I have a plan to stay at my friend's home once I'm there and not to check into your apartment at all. Here's my proporsal. Book your apartment, never move into it and just share the rental fee my employer is going to pay as a part of my business trip expenses. You can just have some money for doing nothing. If you are interested, please get back to me soon. Text me in whattsap. This is my numbra pluus oonnnee ssevven thrre ttwwwo thhrree ssiixx zzeroo siixx niinee ninne ffiifee. Waiting for an answer.

[Rich-and-Yan0]

@Dawn81 Thanks for the information. I was just saying to @Iain34 in the thread above that Airbnb has not yet shut down the account of the person who attempted this, despite our having reported it to them. We're not Superhosts yet (we're still relatively new to the site), and so we haven't been given a toll-free number for reporting suspicious accounts and such. But given the growing number of scams and scam attempts not only on Airbnb but on the internet in general, we can only hope that Airbnb does something to give ALL hosts a way to alert them about such dodgy people. 

Cheers.

[Mariana-and-Eduardo0]

Hi there,

Just got a message from a guest with the exact same scam. 

Bad English and American phone number. 

Here is what they wrote:

"Greetings Mariana & Eduardo! My name EIvin This month l plan to go on a business trip to Colares. WhiIe I was looking for an apartment I came across your from the general Iist and l think about booking it. Just let's discuss one point. The thing is that I am actualIy do not plan to stay in your apartment, my good old friend is going to host me instead. I have the foIlowing plan. My empIoyer pays for my business triip,, you get this rental fee and we just share it with you, and nobody wilI come to you. You can just have some money for doing nothing. lf you find this idea as intriguing as I do, pllease get back to me soon. Text me in *sensitive information hidden* and"

[Rich-and-Yan0]

@Mariana-and-Eduardo0 Wow, sounds like the exact same scam indeed. Glad you were vigilant enough to catch it. Keep spreading the news!

[Trang87]

Hi,

Thank you for sharing this. I just got this message full of spelling mistakes too with the same content. 

Gr33ting$, Trang! 😜 l am Peter. I'm going to have a business trip to Jáchymov. I was looking through Airbnb to find some apartments there and 1 was thinkingg to book your apartment There is something about my booking that I would like to discuss with you The thing is that I am actually not planning to stay in your household my g00d oldd friend is going tto hhost me instead. I have a plan to stay at my friend's home once I'm there and not to check into your apartment at all. The ppurrpose of bo0kingg yourr aparttment is simp1e. B0ok your househo1dd, never check in and just share the rental f33 that will be paid by my emp1oyerr You can just have some money for doing nothing. 1f you ffind this proposa1 as intriguing as 1 do p1ease gett bback tto me soon. You could text me in VVaz zap. My nuber is ..sevennn..nineee..twooo..sixxx..sevennn..sixxx..sevennn..twooo..sixxx..sixxx..nineee

[Rich-and-Yan0]

Hi @Trang87. Thank you as well for your input. Yeah, it sounds like the exact same scam, doesn't it? They are clearly using numbers in place of letter characters to escape Airbnb's detection software for scammers. It's pretty sneaky, but not surprising given the complexity and sophistication of these dark underworld people who are on the internet these days. 

Cheers.

[Melodie-And-John0]

Thanks for sharing @Rich-and-Yan0 ,  More than once a person from "Microsoft" called me directly to say my computer had a virus they could help me with, how thoughtful of them, if only I had the time and a couple hacker tools of my own to whack them back with!   Im guessing the split scam has worked before or he/she wouldnt waste the time it takes to see it through.  good catch, stay well, JR

[Rich-and-Yan0]

@Melodie-And-John0 Yes, I guess it's like the Nigerian princess and some of those other tired old scams we all used to see in the early days of the internet. Although most of us laughed at them at the time, they must have worked on some people or we wouldn't have continually seen them popping up.

Anyway, it's good that we hosts are all sticking together and reminding one another to keep our eyes open--because the scamming attempts are clearly not going to stop. 

Thanks for sharing. Stay healthy yourself, especially there in New York State. I went to university in Rochester and have friends there still, and so my heart has been going out to all of you.

[Donald28]

I'm surprised you wasted the lawyer friends time sending that to him/her. That's clearly a scam and any host that falls for it is soo to have a learning experience. 

[Rich-and-Yan0]

@Donald28 Actually, if you read my original post, I indicated that we were suspicious from the start. I used words like "odd," "dodgy," and so on to describe the text written.

However, I asked my lawyer friend about it because it was a new scam to us. We had no doubt there was something fishy to it, but we didn't know how exactly this "person" could book with us (and supposedly send us money), and then make a profit from us and not his boss. I asked her not only so that we could learn how this scam works, but so that we could share what we had discovered with the hosting community--which is exactly what we did. And if you look at the responses above, you can see that this was new to many other hosts as well, and that they were grateful for the efforts that we and others were making to alert one another to these scam attempts.

[Levon-D0]

Hi, I just recieved the same type of fraudulent offer. Notice from the text that the bad actor is trying to elude from detection by replacing letters by numbers and mispelling words in efforts to bypass Airbnb filters I assume. 
I guess they havent figured out how to bypass the phone number detection algorythms. I strongly recommend anyone that recieves these offers to report the user immediately. This will prevent them from spamming other hosts with the same account. I wish I could follow through the transaction to see if the sender will ctually try to send some malware through Whatsapp or by other means of communication. My day job as a cyber-security analyst is curious to know how far they would take this fraud. Is is mainly to use a stolen credit card information (there is another reason to notify Airbnb about this user, so that the associated credit card is quickly blacklisted.. i'm sure the actual owner will apreciate).

Anyways, if anyone else has any evidence to share about the potential MALWARE or VIRUS that could have been delivered after a succesull contact with the fraudster I would be glad to collaborate in escalating such malware to Microsoft and various other security product vendors.

Feel free to ask me about such "social engeneering" deceptive techniques.

Have a safe quarantine fellow humans.

LD

[Robin4]

@Levon-D0  

Hi, hope you are bunkered down ok over there is California!

This scam is not about sending you malware or trying to access your banking details, it is simply trying to trick you.

This is how the scam goes........

You get an enquiry such as what you have received. You think, "Cool, this might be a good way to get something for nothing, I don't even have to make the bed, just dollars in the bank"!

So, you pre-approve the enquiry and the next thing you get a confirmed 3 week reservation with a confirmation code and everything looks just rosey, all through Airbnb, all official!

What has happened is the 'guest has used the 'Pay less up-front' scheme. There is no risk to him because he does have the opportunity to cancel and get that 'half up-front' payment back.

Now you each have the others phone number because a confirmed booking is in place and private messaging can take place without Airbnb being in the loop any further.

A message will come saying....'As per our arrangement we will split the payout you are going to get, but it needs to run its course because the boss is the one who has paid for the stay and if Airbnb alerts him the boss will cancel and the deal will be off. Send me my 50% to this xxxxxxxxxxx account, and when your payout comes through you just get to keep the lot'.

If you are actually silly enough to do that....and you would be amazed at how many people are, as soon as you transfer the money to that xxxxxxxxx account the 'guest will cancel the reservation and be refunded by Airbnb, all except the service fees, and you will have lost that 50% you thought was a good deal outlaying!

Don't get involved in deals!

Cheers.......Rob

@Rich-and-Yan0  @Melodie-And-John0  @Trang87 @Donald28 

[Rich-and-Yan0]

@Robin4 Thank you for the information. As I have stated above, we were quite certain that this was a scam from the start, but as we are still relatively new at hosting and had not yet heard of this scam or had anyone attempting to try something similar with us, then this was all new territory for us. 

And I must say, we've been pretty impressed at the responses of you and the other hosts so far in alerting one another about these kinds of scam attempts. We actually joined this group months before we became hosts (but knew that we were going to be), in part because it really did feel like a community, and we're happy to see that that still rings true today.

Thanks again. Stay well.

[Pilar1]

Thanks for that great explanation Rob, I also received one of those back in January and not having heard of anything similar before was intrigued as how the scam would work. What I don’t understand is why people who fall for it agree to the payment before they are paid themselves by AirBnB which in my case can be up to a week after check in. Maybe if they don’t the scammers move on to the next? 

[Rich-and-Yan0]

@Pilar1 From what I've been hearing from various parties, including many in our hosting community who have already responded to this post, there are several ways in which these people can scam you. One is by issuing a false payment to Airbnb (e.g. a fraudulent cheque) and having you pay them their half before the bank has cleared it. Another is by starting the booking, getting paid by you, and then cancelling for "emergency reasons" and being refunded by Airbnb. And so on. And so on.

I guess that, like with so many other scammers I've been hearing about recently, they are trying to take advantage of hosts who are losing money in desperate times, and thus might be willing to take a chance on something like this. Judging from the responses so far, no one in our community seems to have fallen for it yet, but that doesn't mean that these people won't keep trying. Just this morning I received an email from MalwareBytes listing all of the kinds of scams that have been appearing since this crisis began, and while I had heard of several of them already, it was quite an eye-opening list--and really shows you how evil these people can be.

Stay vigilant, hosting community. Do your research. As the old saying goes, if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.

Thanks for posting. 

[Rich-and-Yan0]

@Levon-D0 Thank you for the information. I'm sure that others are grateful as well. 

In your case, the number was "hidden by Airbnb," but if you read the original post of ours and some others from fellow hosts such as @Trang87, you can see that they were trying to use coded number hiding by way of letter characters. The fact that the scammers' attempt to do the same thing with you weeks after they had attempted it with us (and after we had reported it) was blocked by Airbnb is probably a good thing, as it suggests that by alerting them to the scam, their algorithm is catching it now. 

Let's hope that is the case. Thanks again for sharing.

(P.S. Like @Robin4, who also replied to your post, I mistakenly thought at first that the "CA" in your post was for California. However, I also lived in Montreal for a year and remembered that there was a place called Longueuil in the south shore, not so far from the city. That's when I realise that you are in Canada, not California, haha. Anyway, I hope you and all your loved ones are well there.)