August the 1st, 2023 – The police in Germany have issued a warning to Germans who are planning Croatian holidays, primarily because of a scam…
Every now and then, we read of a new scam having reared its ugly head and some unfortunate (usually elderly) people having fallen prey to it. It seems that private apartment scams are now very much “in fashion”. In these cases, fake landlords scam would-be tourists out of significant sums of their hard-earned money through fake websites which allegedly look legitimate.
With inflationary pressures continuing to burden the vast majority of our back pockets and bank accounts, the German police have been keen to forewarn unsuspecting tourists of the threat of something appearing too good to be true.
As Poslovni Dnevnik writes, the German police are currently warning their citizens who are planning Croatian holidays this summer to be careful which sites they book their apartments through. This warning has come about following reported cases of fraud, according to Fenix Magazin.
“A great apartment at a reasonable price…”
The Schwaben Süd/West police department in Kempten has been keen to warn German tourists planning Croatian holidays to be aware of fake websites offering private accommodation along the Croatian Adriatic coast.
As an example, they cite the cases of two families from the country who booked a “great apartment at a reasonable price” Unfortunately, that great apartment at a reasonable price somewhere along the Croatian coast turned out to be a scam. One of the families paid the money for the apartment through a fake website that was made to “look like the website of a reputable service provider”.
They made their first contact with a “landlord in Croatia” through an advertisement on the Internet. The apartment was rented “through messages and e-mails”. The families were required to pay half the rent amount immediately, meaning that one family paid a very substantial sum.
Fortunately, the second family recognised the fake offer in time and didn’t pay the requested amount of rent in advance.
