Scammers are becoming more and more creative when finding ways to scam people, and technology is their best ally. Now the new victims are homeowners renting their properties in Airbnbl, Vrbo and other platforms.

The first thing Airbnb and Vrbo ask you is to never receive payments or make arrangements outside their platform, and they say this for 2 reasons, first because they profit from every transaction and second, because they can protect you in the case of a scam or fraud.

So be incredibly careful when a potential guest asks you to send you a payment outside the platform because their intentions are most probably not good.

The new scam appears with a new technology accessible to most of the Canadian population whose banks offer online banking with a mobile app. These apps have the capability of depositing checks simply by taking pictures of them. The problem is that the app is not able to verify if the check is real or fake, and in the meantime the funds would be deposited into your account until the check bounces.

How does the Aribnb / Vrbo scam work?

1. The way these scammers work is by asking you to receive the payment by check because Vrbo or Airbnb do not accept checks, and they need to pay by check as a policy from the company they work for. So, they will send you a scanned check by email, the one they would ask you to print and deposit through your app. This is the check we got

2. Then they will wait about 24 hours to tell you that they need to cancel the reservation because their boss canceled the meeting, or some BS like that. At this point they will ask for a refund through an interac email transfer and offer you to keep $100 for the trouble. The email where they asked me to send the money to is: [email protected] (Cassandra Morley) I am making this public hoping that someone might google this email and find out that it is a scam.

3. At this point you might have believed them send the transfer just to realize a few days later that the original check bounced back and not only you sent them money, but the bank will also charge you for depositing a fake check.

So be very careful and never accept payments outside the platforms, unless they send an email transfer directly to you.