The Goa Police found a big scam where four people cheated at least 500 tourists by offering fake villas and properties on popular travel websites. These tourists were tricked into paying advance money for rentals that didn’t actually exist.
How the scam operated
The police said the scammers pretended to be hotel or property managers and made fake listings for "non-existent" villas and holiday homes on well-known travel websites. These fake listings, labelled as “unverified,” made tourists contact the supposed managers directly to make payments, avoiding the secure payment systems of the booking websites.
“Based on call records of the accused, we found that they had been in contact with more than 500 customers,” said North Goa SP Akshat Kaushal. Many victims paid advances ranging from ₹10,000 to ₹20,000 to secure bookings after being told the properties would otherwise be unavailable.
The scammers used images of real villas taken from the internet or YouTube to attract victims, offering deals at cheaper and more attractive prices. This approach successfully lured tourists seeking affordable holiday stays.
The scam was discovered when a Chandigarh resident filed a complaint by email, saying he was cheated out of ₹20,000 while booking a property named ‘Ruby Villa.’ When he arrived in Goa, he found out that the villa did not exist.
The police registered an FIR at the Anjuna police station under Section 318(4) of BNS, which deals with cheating. During the investigation, the police found out that this scam was much larger and involved many victims in different places.
Arrests made across states
The police arrested four people involved in the scam: Saurabh, Sayed Ali Mukhtar, Mohammad Firoz, and Mohd Azharuddin Saif. Three of them were caught in Hyderabad, and the fourth near Jaipur.
SP Kaushal explained that the group was running their operation from a rented room in Hyderabad. They would take calls from potential victims there. To make the scam seem more trustworthy, they hired women telephone operators to talk to the victims and build trust during conversations.
SP Kaushal explained, “The transactions were not made through websites. There are two kinds of properties listed on websites: one is verified, and the other is unverified. On unverified listings, one has to contact the manager of the listed property after the booking.”
The scammers misused weaknesses in online booking platforms to create fake property listings. They tricked people into making advance payments using digital payment methods connected to many bank accounts. This made it hard for the victims to track their money after being cheated.
The scammers used pressure tactics to make people feel they might miss a great deal. Many tourists, wanting to book quickly, paid the advance money without checking if the listings were real.
“The accused shared photos of villas from locations outside Goa or, in certain cases, put up pictures of villas from YouTube,” Kaushal noted. This strategy enabled them to fly under the radar since the amounts swindled from individual victims were relatively small.
Goa Police are warning tourists to double-check property listings, especially on unverified websites. They are still trying to figure out how many people were tricked and recover the stolen money. This case shows how important it is to have better checks on online booking platforms to stop scams that target innocent travellers.