In the summer, people tend to be more relaxed because for the majority it is synonymous with holidays or at least their arrival. This season of the year makes people more relaxed, leading some people to be more susceptible to deception. The emergence of new technologies contributed on a large scale to make life easier for scammers as they often pay for things online without ever checking them personally. 

There are 4 most common scams during the holiday period: 

Renting a house often seems a more interesting hypothesis than staying in hotels, but also becomes attractive to scammers, who often end up asking for an advance payment for an imaginary property. These, use well-known pages like "milanuncios.com" or "segundamano.es" to carry out their scams. They can appropriate photographs of a flat, noting the address and pretending to be the owner without the real owner perceiving what is happening to them. In this context, the scammer tends to ask for money in advance since in reality there is no residence to rent. In a different but no less important way, they also advertise images of dream apartments, perfectly furnished and with the peculiarity of being located on the beachfront, at extremely cheap prices. In these cases, in addition to the prices well below the average that can give us a warning signal, the location and the state of the apartment can be fictitious.

Fortunately, there are always ways to avoid this type of fraud, being a little more attentive in the suspicious details present in the ads in question. In general, before paying, it is important to check that the apartment is actually for rent and that it is located at the address provided. You only have to look at other known websites (because it is rarely exclusive deals), try to contact the owner and check the prices, and then use simple maps or GPS programs to confirm the location.

In order for a person to protect himself or herself from this type of crime, it is essential to keep four key points in mind:

Despite all the care of the world nobody is free to go through such a situation, where the imagination of the scammer exceeds the capacity of the victims to understand what is happening to them. However, the more informed the people are, the more difficult the work will be for those who make their living by deceiving others without the least bit of modesty.

Sindia Alves and A. Oliver

Anthropologist and Private Investigator
of Oliver Detectives