National: Booking a holiday online? Bank issues warning of new 'sophisticated' scam doing the rounds

A warning has been issued to people booking holidays and trips away online to be aware of a new scam doing the rounds.

AIB issued the warning about the travel scam known as ghost brokering, which sees criminals targeting people who are searching online for holiday deals using fake ads.

These ads appear to be legitimate with a "sponsored" tag but lead customers to a fraudulent website, which then asks potential victims for their email address and phone number before being allowed to use their search function.

Those details are then used to contact the person via messaging service such as WhatsApp, enticing the customer into buying cheap flights and holidays.

The unsuspecting customer then pays for the offer and authorises it, believing the offer is legitimate having sourced the information themselves.

Customers often then receive a booking confirmation from a fake travel company, to further the appearance of legitimacy. 

Once the card and security details have been taken, fraudsters can then make many more genuine holiday bookings to sell on to someone else.

AIB's Head of Financial Crime, Carol Lawton said:

"International intelligence shows us that this type of fraud or 'ghost brokering' is on the rise and as a result, customers should exercise caution when booking holidays online.

"These scams are often sophisticated and even use sponsored ads to target people who may assume that the travel company is genuine.

"Not only does the person lose out on the supposed holiday they booked, they are often further defrauded when the criminals use their stolen card and security details to buy genuine holidays to sell on at a later stage.

"We ask our customers to always think before they click the link."

AIB has said this scam is on the rise globally, and urges customers to check the property actually exists and is owned by the person they are dealing with, before booking.

It also suggests that people do some research and make sure the company they are dealing with is genuine and that the bank account is located in the same country as the property by checking the country code in the IBAN, such as IE in an Irish account.

A padlock symbol beside beside the web address is a good indication that the website is genuine and secure.