Trade fights back after fraudsters target agents during rebound
Debbie WardJust as the trade tries to rebuild itself after the Covid crisis, there’s an old villain back in town: fraud is swiftly approaching pre-pandemic levels, with the cost of living crisis among the driving factors.
Action Fraud, the UK’s national reporting centre for fraud and cybercrime, received 4,244 reports of holiday and travel-related scams for England, Wales and Northern Ireland during the 2021/22 financial year alone – a year during which it must not be forgotten that travel, for the most part, was restricted.
This compares with 6,646 reports during the unrestricted period, from 1 March 2019 to 29 February 2020.
A snap TTG poll in February revealed 60% of agent respondents believe they, or their business, have successfully identified and thwarted a potential fraudulent approach in the past three months, while three-quarters of respondents said fraud was a bigger concern than it was pre-pandemic.
"There’s not a travel company in the UK that isn’t experiencing some kind of fraud at the moment," said Barry Gooch, chair of Prevention of Fraud in Trade (PROFiT), which assists prosecutions and acts as a "broker" between various industry fraud reporting systems.
"It’s always worse every year. It’s completely outstripping the ability of the police to deal with it." Gooch also stressed many seemingly solo scams are linked to organised crime.
Cost of living effect
Abta, understandably, is concerned. Steve Abrahamson, the association’s head of risk management, believes the situation has been particularly bad recently because "criminals will often look to target peak periods when they know customers are looking for bargains".
The warnings follow concerns voiced at Jet2holidays’ November conference that the cost of living crisis would accelerate "bargain" holiday scams, and news last month of the nine-year jail sentence County Durham "travel agent" Lyne Barlow received for defrauding consumers out of £2.6 million in a Ponzi-style scheme.
These knocks to the trade’s reputation only add to situations where it is the direct target. "This is why I’d never book with an independent travel agent," read one comment in a public Facebook group started by Barlow’s victims.
Several agents responded to defend themselves. Claire Smith, director of Coconut Travel in Hartlepool, said: "All us independent agents are being tarred with the same brush – it makes me sick what she did."
Smith, whose agency is part of the Hays Travel Independence Group and is situated in the same region Barlow lived, told TTG: "My Facebook enquiries have been down, but I do have a shop as well and, since the Lyne Barlow case, there have been more walk-in customers."
Previously, 80% of the agency’s custom was from Facebook; now it is 50% face-to-face, with calls also increasing. Smith believes it’s a confidence issue, particularly with new customers. "Certainly, people in the north-east know about [the case] and have aired their views."
Smith launched her homeworking operation onto the high street a year ago and believes if she hadn’t, her business would be down thanks to Barlow.
"It really, really scares you," she said, adding that since the Thomas Cook collapse, with Covid following immediately after, travel has felt stuck under a "black cloud".
PROFiT’s Gooch warns criminals can also destroy reputations by cloning or hacking legitimate travel businesses’ social media and websites.
It’s just one of the ways the trade is under attack. "We probably get at least two or three [fraudulent] phone calls a month," said Jackie Steadman, director of TravelTime World in Berkhamsted.
"At the moment, as an industry, we’re being targeted because we’re a relatively soft touch." She said agencies in "sleepy little village and towns" were seen as easy pickings.
TravelTime World tells suspicious callers, usually wanting to depart within a week, it only accepts bank transfers, at which point those hoping to use stolen credit cards typically lose interest.
One such scammer tried to build a rapport by calling several times before attempting to book. Others try to secure flights with plausible lead-in times then contact the airline to bring the date forward.
Increasingly, fraudsters are looking to target travel supply chains, hijacking legitimate identities.
In a recent case, a scammer posed as an agent from The Travel Boutique, using its Abta number while trying to book with Bedbank. While this was quickly discovered, it underlined the need for extra security checks.
TravelTime World has also been targeted by rogue "trade" calls to its out-of-hours line, and now asks other agents to prove their identity with a pin number. Some operators are asking for similarly agreed identifiers.
Raising awareness
Abta shares current scams and safeguarding tips on its MemberZone, as does Aito via its intranet. Both work with PROFiT and the police-backed Global Cyber Alliance.
Bharat Gadhoke, Aito head of commercial, said he knew of travel companies caught out by emails purporting to be from a senior member of the same organisation requesting an urgent payment.
He warned agents and operators to be alert to subtly different email addresses with a letter or dot in the wrong place, and to have a two-step verification process for payments.
Noting how increases in fraud have coincided with peaks, Advantage Travel Partnership chief operating officer Paul Nunn said: "We have been raising awareness of cybercrime and customer fraud across our membership through helpful tips, videos and information on topics such as phishing, stolen credit cards and other scams."
Gooch urges all travel companies to sign up for advice and alerts from PROFiT and Action Fraud, and to use free tools from the Global Cyber Alliance such as DMARC, which helps protect against fraudulent emails, and Quad9, which flags known malicious websites.
He stressed: "Most travel organisations are micro-entities with less than 10 employees. If they get a fraud of £100,000, or even £20,000, it’s enough to finish them off."
Steadman still believes the industry has its "head in the sand". Following the case of Barlow, who was briefly an agent with InteleTravel, Steadman has called for a better cross-industry system to share red flags concerning potential rogues who may try to move between homeworking organisations and other companies.
"If we have some sort of register where we can put that information, we start to build up a picture," she said.
When it comes to reassuring clients, Steadman believes agents should lean on the profile of Abta and consortia.
Abta already works with Action Fraud to help the public spot the warning signs of rogue holiday sales, while Aito takes consumer calls from as far away as the US to verify members.
But Gadhoke warned the trade must make sure its own systems are robust too. "It’s so easy to lose money out of the back door but so hard to earn it at the coal face."
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Debbie Ward
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