After a dejected mother drove 160 miles for her first family vacation abroad only to learn she had been duped by a horrible hoax, charities are warning of a rise in holiday scams.
Amber Kmiotek had used Facebook earlier this year to plan the week-long caravan vacation for her 54-year-old mother Adele Green and five-month-old Riley in Skegness, Lincolnshire.
After exchanging texts and Facetime chats with the woman going by the name of Amiee and claiming to be the owner of an eight-berth caravan, Amber was left feeling enthusiastic about her eagerly anticipated family vacation.
She gave the woman a deposit of £100 and agreed to give the whole £200 when she got to the job location.
Even weeks before the trip, she started getting texts wondering if she was looking forward to it happening.
However, the family was humiliated after the two-hour journey when they were left at the Skegness Sands campground when the caravan con artist did not appear.
We had been waiting for over two hours, and Amber added, “We were simply devastated.” We were very excited for this holiday because it was my son’s first.
“After about 30 minutes, we realised that something wasn’t right. We sent over 100 calls and texts, and she was reading them all before disappearing offline. It’s not funny at all.
Scammers have been warning tourists that they are promoting phoney flights and fake reservations to make hundreds of pounds, so this news comes as no surprise.
According to data given by Lloyds Bank earlier this year, people who were duped by cheap travel offers lost an average of £2,955 per, and people who made fictitious reservations at hotels or caravan parks also lost hundreds of dollars.
Amber made the decision to reserve the vacation as a treat for herself, her mother, and her little kid after looking up staycations on Facebook.
There are many websites where you may purchase caravans, Amber explained, so I looked at Skegness caravans. Although I’ve never done it before, I figured it would be safe because I have friends who rent out caravans.
“Amiee” sent me a private message inquiring about a caravan; I requested more information, including pictures and the location.
She even Facetimed my mother and I to show us the caravan she was putting together at the time. When she called, she was travelling in a caravan.
She was calling me occasionally to make sure we were coming and saying, “I bet you’re looking forward to it,” and she was texting me almost every other day.
We couldn’t tell that it was fake because she was so restrained and skilled at what she was doing.
We promised her £200 on the spot. She kept asking us when we paid it, and we replied that we did so that we would be sure that she wouldn’t take advantage of us. She said that was okay.
Amber cautioned that her family had been left stranded at the static caravan park because they had been joined on their trip by one of Adele’s carers and his children.
The trickster reassured Amber that she was on her way to drop off the keys, according to texts exchanged between Amber and ‘Amiee’ that day.
But after driving 160 miles from Doncaster, the group was left waiting for two hours, leaving her heartbroken that her son’s first vacation had been ruined.
The owner of the phone Amber received messages from denied having the name Amiee or defrauding the family.
She alleges that someone is impersonating her by using her phone number and her partner’s banking information. She claims to have reported the incident to the police, but was unable to provide a crime reference number.
The woman acknowledged that she was the one in the social media pictures, and Amber insisted that the woman in the pictures was the one she had facetimed.
I went to the police myself, it’s not me, someone is using my number and pretending to be me, she stated. Never in my life have I made a video call to the girl.
It would have been them, so they aren’t even utilising my photos. The police are helping me deal with this personally. Even worse, I don’t even have a bank account of my own to use.
I told the cops that my number was connected to another phone, and they would use that information to identify the true offender.
Skegness Sands, the exclusive owners-only site where the con artist claimed to own the caravan, showed no sympathy for Amber and “asked why she had packed up her whole family.”
‘We would just like to make it quite clear that Skegness Sands is in no way associated to the purported owner that took Amber’s deposit,’ a spokeswoman for the company said.
“I have asked Amber to remove the address portion of her post because this caravan belongs to a private owner and is unrelated to the incident, and I do not think it is appropriate for their address to be disparaged,” she wrote.
We were contacted by a mother and daughter on May 24 asking if we were a rental site because the woman claimed to have paid a deposit to an Amiee for a caravan and was verifying their legitimacy. We informed them that since we are a non-rental site and only for private owners, there was a very high likelihood that their claim was false.
I don’t deny that Amber lost £100, but she was told in May that we weren’t a rental site, so she wasn’t sure to call us.
We gave her no justification to believe that her business connections with Amiee were real, thus it is puzzling why she packed up her entire family and travelled.
Travelers were cautioned to be on the lookout for ticketing, travel, and health insurance frauds earlier this year by trade group UK Finance.
According to the report, as Britons start looking for vacation packages, sophisticated phishing and fraudulent social media advertisements are on the rise, and new street scams could surprise unwary tourists in well-known tourist areas.
Would-be travellers cannot afford to let their guard down when looking for the best deals, according to Liz Ziegler, Director of Fraud Prevention at Lloyds Bank.
It’s crucial that customers understand how to keep safe because scammers are ready to profit from any last-minute rush in bookings.
“For the best safety, always use a credit card and only book directly with reputable websites or travel brokers.
This comes after scammers posted a woman’s London residence on Booking.com, leaving dozens of vacationers stranded when they arrived.
The victim, who only went by the first name Gillian, was at home on July 4 in the city’s north when a mother and her daughter came on her door and claimed to have reserved the place.
She had to cope with dozens of additional people who knocked on her door throughout the month after she turned them away.
They had travelled from all over the world, some from as far away as Australia and Saudi Arabia, only to discover that the hotel they had reserved didn’t exist.
Instead, they were all misled into believing they had rented the woman’s house for their international trip by a false listing on Booking.com.
Have you been the victim of a holiday scam similar to this? To send information and photos, use this address: jacob.thorburn@mailonline.co.uk.