A TD HAS issued a warning to the public about holiday accommodation fraud as figures show a spike in cases.
Emer Higgins TD said she obtained figures showing a rise in incidents of accommodation fraud reported to the Gardaí.
The stats show a rise in reported incidents from 231 in 2019 to 276 last year, with 850 cases from 2019 to the start of May. More than €1.4 million was stolen in rental scams over the four-year period.
“While there was a slight drop in incidents of accommodation fraud due to the pandemic in 2020, there was a 20% rise in the number of incidents in 2021, with €463,934 stolen through fraudulent activity that year. There were 115 cases to May this year.
“There are generally two types of accommodation fraud, rental scams for those seeking long-term accommodation and holiday rental fraud, which targets people booking accommodation for a holiday. The latter can be harder to detect as the property may be in a different country so there’s no option to view it beforehand.
“With holiday rental fraud, the vast majority of victims usually spot an advert on social media and will have contacted the fraudster via social media or WhatsApp. Indeed this was the case in 2021, with 135 incidents of accommodation fraud happening online and 54 through social media,” she said.
Higgins said social media companies must take action on the scams which are published on their sites.
“I want to see more resources being…
