Gardai have warned Irish people to be incredibly vigilant when booking holidays as accommodation fraud has seen a sharp increase.
Detective Chief Superintendent Pat Lordan has said that although accommodation fraud reduced during the pandemic, it is making a comeback as people return to travelling both within Ireland and abroad.
Speaking on RTE's Morning Ireland, Detective Lordan said: "Accommodation fraud was gone a little bit quiet, I suppose due to Covid, but now everybody wants to go on holidays, whether it's down to West Cork or North Donegal or further afield and we are seeing a lot of the criminal gangs focusing on rental fraud, long term and short term."
Detective Lordan urged people to stay clear of booking made through social media as one Irish family lost a significant amount of money after paying for what they thought was legitimate long term accommodation.
He said: "My advice is to keep away from these social media sites. Go onto a traditional site that you've used before and book it that way because the deal that you see on one of the social media sites when you get to your premises, I'm afraid, as one family found out recently, there was another family living in the house when they arrived there, and they had paid a substantial amount of money to rent it long term."
Detective Lordan explained that in most of these cases, the money lost could not be returned to the person as the bank is not liable.
He said: "Most of the criminals are very intelligent. They are using different methodologies to get the money from you, ranging from iTunes vouchers to cash to PayPal and a lot of other offline payment methods but absolutely, in most of these cases, the bank are not liable because you have given away your pin number, you've given away your passcode, and in some cases, you've given control of your bank account."
He added: "People are allowing the criminal organisations to access their bank accounts by providing their personal details, and once they get your bank account details, they will take all the money, literally, from your account no matter how small an amount you have or how large of an amount you have."
Warning of smishing scams circulating at present, Detective Lordan said scammers are becoming more and more sophisticated.
He said: "They've even improved further. They are now sending you text messages to say that your bank card has been compromised, and please provide your bank card. 'Maybe we will get somebody to call around to your house and collect your bank card'.
"Banks will never do that. An Garda Siochana will never ask you for your personal details, nor will revenue or anyone else and in fact, the latest what I believe is a raffle that you've won, and you need to put in your personal details so that you win this prize.
"Please, I would ask everybody not to provide your personal bank details and PIN numbers to anybody."
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