Listen as scammer poses as an agent in attempt to defraud operator

The scammer told an advisor at Bedbank, part of the Vertical Travel Group, she was Janette Healey from Shenfield-based The Travel Boutique and she was having trouble making a booking online. 

She then offered to give Healey’s Abta number as proof of ID – but unbeknownst to the impersonator, Healey’s husband is Vertical boss Peter Healey, and Healy herself recruited the advisor that the scammer was attempting to dupe.

"Once I heard the call, I started to think – have they done it to anyone else?," Healey told TTG. "Some operators don’t have any security checks in place, which is a big problem and opens them to issues like this.

"Some smaller agencies don’t have the capacity to pay this sort of money if it does turn out to be scam, and there are no protections in place for us if we lose that money."

Healey urged operators to do more to protect against scammers, by implementing additional layers of security when taking a booking from an agent.