Russians in the resorts are cheated with special cynicism: fraud schemes are revealed

This summer, the “seasonal” exacerbation of near-holiday scammers is taking place on a special scale. They are especially cynical towards the Russians, taking advantage of the fact that not all types of online payment and booking sites are available to our vacationers. The host side itself warns them about this at resorts popular with compatriots.

After several emergencies in a row with Russian families, Turkish law enforcement officers warn vacationers about the need for increased vigilance: there are a lot of “ostaps” around vacationers, but not everyone who calls himself a “Turkish subject” is such in reality. And if even a tourist who gave such a crook his hard-earned money does not know anything about him, then the police cannot find an impostor.

To the credit of the Turkish authorities, they started talking about the increase in the number of frauds against Russians back in the spring, except that, in the heat of their own elections, they forgot to remind them that with the start of the high season, the Ostaps usually get worse. According to the local tourism industry, in just one day on June 14, three unrelated Russian families with children flew from the Russian Federation to Antalya, only at the airport realizing that they had come to nowhere. As it turned out in the police, all of them were swindled by one “ostap”, which they themselves found on the “booking”. According to compatriots with children, they did not want to overpay the tour operator for a “noisy hotel where only ours are,” so they decided to find housing on their own. A Turkish homeowner with a photo of a cozy house in a beautiful quiet place and at an adequate price, independently of each other, attracted all three families of domestic vacationers. And all of them, realizing that you cannot book such a beautiful house with a Russian card on the international portal, they wrote directly to its owner – to the telegram address indicated under the advertisement for renting resort real estate. When communicating on the Russian social network, the “Turkish householder” seemed extremely nice: he agreed to book a reservation for everyone, despite the fact that they asked for the same dates. As soon as he received from the Russians the impressive advance payment specified as a condition, the “landlord” disappeared from both the “booking” and the “cart”. But all the guests of the “hospitable Turkish host” found out about this only at the Antalya airport, where he longed to personally meet each of the families in order to take him to his “hospitable home” himself.

“The victims have only screenshots with the homeowner’s page on the service,” summarizes lawyer Zeki Ilkin. – The name, of course, is fictitious, so he is most likely not a Turk either. And even if the house with the photo exists in reality in the vicinity of Antalya, it does not give anything. He could copy photos from the Internet. Or even personally take a picture, passing by. In such situations, only bitter experience remains as compensation. Moreover, in this scheme, in comparison with the previous ones, there is an “innovation”: we used to talk about phishing, that is, fake pages of popular aggregators, and now we have a real aggregator, and only a fake landlord.

Experts of the Turkish tourism industry are in solidarity: you can hope for a good reputation of the service (in this case, “booking”) if you negotiate on its site with the appropriate commission for mediation. And if the Russians themselves went to the Runet zone together with their “Turkish landlord”, where they paid off with him, then “booking” definitely has nothing to do with it, and the Turks, perhaps, too. “Ostap” could well turn out to be the same citizen of the Russian Federation as his victims.

The Land of the Pyramids is also warning about the “burning” of Russians on their own land. In “Russian” hotels in Egyptian resorts, they sell timeshares – agreements on shared long-term rental of resort real estate – from a modest hotel room to a luxurious villa (the cost of rent for a period of 5 to 30 years is divided between tenants, and they use the rented property in turn). They offer timeshare in Egypt, and real estate in “civilized” Spain or Italy. The scam is not new, and in the West it’s not a scam at all, but a real tourist product, but under the conditions of sanctions for a Russian, it’s like flushing money down the toilet. Although today “timeshare workers” are also playing on the realities of the day: they say that the signature on the “international” timeshare agreement gives the Russian an advantage in obtaining a Schengen visa. And now Russians get a free lunch to “suck in” a timeshare (this was not the case before, timeshare buyers had to feel like rich people, and not those who are being fed).

– When they put up an announcement that these timeshare workers had arrived, everyone just grunted, – says 49-year-old Yegor, who is now resting in Sharm. – But as soon as it was announced that there would be a free lunch in a restaurant for those who came to listen to the “extremely beneficial offer for Russians”, the majority immediately flooded. Like, it’s okay, Vaska listens and eats. My wife went with a friend. They returned only after 3 hours, they said that immediately after the introductory part “a fat Russian guy in family shorts” he suddenly took and laid out an advance payment of 3.5 thousand euros for a 30-year-old timeshare. His wife was also there and seemed to even try to stop him, but he said that he was “an economist and understands profit better.” My wife suspects that the uncle was a fake. In general, it looks like a hypnosis session: in the midst of the heat of the day, with free cocktails and sweet speeches.

– Over the past 6 months, during a foreign holiday, more than a hundred of our citizens have thrown out 1-5 thousand euros for a timeshare agreement, which turned out to be a fig leaf on the territory of the Russian Federation, – says lawyer Maxim Pavlov, whose practice began with similar “cases” from the 90s . – And this is only from those who understood the meaning of the swindle and demanded an advance payment back. Then they found out that there is a tricky clause in the contract: in case of non-payment of the full cost within the specified time, which is from 10 to 30 thousand euros within 3-6 months, the advance payment is automatically canceled. My clients paid 3,500 euros as an advance in three visits for a conditional hotel room, where, after paying off the entire amount, they supposedly will be able to rest for free for 5 years – in any similar hotel room of this chain around the world. Another thing is that in Europe and America it works, because if something is wrong, the company can be sued. And you can’t do anything from the Russian Federation, even if the sellers of timeshare generally disappeared with your money. Domestic courts will not help timeshare victims, even if the sellers were Russian-speaking. The courts of the Russian Federation will accept a claim only if the advance was paid by bank transfer to the account of a Russian legal entity.

And one more “tourist season novelty” – for those who have not saved up for the resort, but are glad to at least admire: looked at the photos of a dozen hotels, rated them from one “heart” to five – and for this you immediately get several thousand rubles for map. Such a tempting offer comes to the phones of Russians allegedly from a popular online booking service. But those who have already tried their luck there warn: alas, this is just another way for network crooks to find out your card details.