Holiday-makers have been tricked into spending thousands of pounds on fake flights after fraudsters hacked a Perthshire travel firm.
A major fraud probe is under way after a gang of cyber criminals stole the identity of Blairgowrie-based Travel Bar and offered too-good-to-be-true deals to unsuspecting Facebook users.
The criminals even hijacked the Travel Bar’s website and redirected customer inquiries.
Staff raised the alarm when they became inundated with calls from confused clients, who claimed to have paid out for long-haul holidays.
It is feared other families who have booked flights through the bogus company – which went under the name Travels Bar – will only find out they have been cheated when they turn up at the airport to catch their flights.
Police and trading standards officers are investigating the scam and believe the fraudsters may be based in the south of England.
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Alison Dow, sales manager at the Travel Bar, confronted one of the gang after receiving several phone calls from disgruntled clients.
“We took a call from someone who was asking about booking a flight. They said to us, that wasn’t the price you gave me before,” she said.
“We had to say to them, but you’ve never phoned us before, so we’ve never given you a price.”
“As the week went on, we were getting more and more calls. People were saying they had booked flights with someone called Rohan. We had to tell them that no one called Rohan works here.”
Ms Dow added: “This kept happening and we realised that something serious was going on.”
When staff saw the emails that had been sent out, they realised the bogus company was using Travel Bar’s official ATOL number, the code used to show a firm is fully licensed as part of a financial protection scheme.
“I got a number for this Rohan and called him up, pretending to be a customer,” said Ms Dow. “I asked him where they were based and he said they were in London, but their head office was in Scotland and they did all their training in Scotland.
“When I tried digging a bit deeper and asked him whereabouts, he said he couldn’t remember the name of the place.”
Ms Dow said: “Fortunately, some of these people had not booked their flights and instead had queried what they were being offered and then found out that something was amiss.
“But sadly, there’s a lot of people out there who have lost loads of money. We had at least a dozen phone calls, at an average of about £700 to £800 a flight.
“There was a family-of-four who had booked a trip to New York in Easter time and that was about £3,000. They only found out the flight didn’t exist when they tried to arrange their seating online.”
The hackers found a way into the company’s website and took charge of its ‘contact us’ button, meaning everyone who tried to get through to Travel Bar was actually redirected to the fraudsters.
“Touch wood, we’ve not had any calls about this since Friday last week,” said Ms Dow. “But the worrying thing is that some people may have booked a flight now, but they’re not travelling until the summer.
“They’ve been sent a receipt and what they think is their itinerary, but they could only find out that they don’t have a ticket until they get to the airport.
“The ones that we have dealt with were travelling very soon, but what about the ones that are further down the line?”
Owner Brenda McCready said the company had taken down its website and was making it more robust.
She said it was important that customers research companies before they book anything, and preferably pop in to a local firm like Travel Bar for a face-to-face meeting.
A spokesman for Perth and Kinross Council’s trading standards team said: “We have become aware of a fake business calling themselves ‘The Travels Bar’ and using the address and ATOL number of a genuine and similarly named business in Perth and Kinross
“The fake business is taking money from people for flights which don’t exist. After they have the consumers’ money they then contact them saying that they need more money for tax.
“This deceit is having a devastating effect on our local business and is conning people out of thousands of pounds.”
Anyone affected is urged to contact the Citizens Advice consumer helpline 03454 04 05 06 and report it to their local police as a fraud.
