Scam: beware of false rental ads!

Thierry Dussopoiu, father, had found his happiness for the holidays with a house equipped with an infinity pool which delighted his children. Unfortunately, he had just been scammed via a fake ad. “I showed up straight to the house to meet the owner and he told me he wasn’t renting his house”, he says. Like him, hundreds of people have been had this summer.

Because the scammers have a well-established method of extracting money from their victims. They spot real ads and copy them from well-known platforms. They then indicate an email address to communicate, thus leaving the site and its secure payment. These rental platforms each have their own way of fighting fraud, but hundreds of ads arrive every day and some slip through the cracks. The safest thing is never to contact the owner with his email. An association of victims has taken legal action for the responsibility of the site to be recognized and for the platform, which refused to compensate them, to be held responsible for what is published. Some have lost up to 10,000 euros.