Q. In March I booked accommodation at a Greek hotel. We had an exchange of emails discussing the rooms, hotel facilities and so on. This led to me making a reservation payment of €2,500 to the bank account – details of which I was given in the emails – via an international bank transfer. In my mind, the hotel was booked and I went ahead to book flights, parking, etc. On 9 June, out of courtesy, I sent the hotel an email to tell them how excited I was and to finalise arrangements/transfers etc for the ten-night holiday that I thought I’d booked with them commencing 19 June. But the hotel did not recognise me and had no booking in my name. I called the hotel and we went through the email trail and we realised that the email address changed ever so slightly during the exchange of emails. It turned out that three emails in, someone had hacked into the hotel’s email account and had taken over the conversation. The hotel accepts that its IT security was breached and confirmed that there were other victims of this fraud, too.
The hotel had already contacted the police, Interpol and the Central Bank of Spain – the beneficiary bank was Spanish. I spoke with my bank, Halifax, which looked into this and concluded that it is technically a “scam” and not a “fraud”, because I knowingly wired the money. On this basis, the bank says it is not liable to cover my losses For the full article click here
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