As the festive season fast approaches, the Financial Intelligence Centre (FIC) is drawing attention to some of the scams popularly used by criminals parting holiday makers from their money.

These scams prey on people’s desire for a holiday and get-away travel by duping them into paying for flights, accommodation, and other activities which never materialise. These schemes often peak ahead of or during the festive season and school holidays.

The FIC has published a report exploring the various categories of holiday scams and highlights some indicators of possible criminality that the public should be aware of. The report follows the analysis of reports it has received over time.

As South Africa’s financial intelligence unit, the FIC receives regulatory reports from accountable institutions. Flowing from its analysis, the FIC identified the methods, trends, and patterns of suspicious transactions, and red flags or indicators associated with holiday scams. These scams relate to holiday rentals, accommodation, vouchers, travel agencies, holiday clubs, fraudulent timeshares, and online ticket sales.

Members of the public are advised to apply extreme caution when approached directly, via social media or by any other means regarding holiday deals that may seem too good to be true. This is especially suspect where deposits or payments need to be made upfront to facilitate the transfer of funds.

Scammers often use pressure tactics and urgency to commit to taking up deals or offers. Those who have fallen victim to a holiday scam should, among the various steps to be taken, file a complaint with their local branch of the South African Police Service.

To entice and extract money from their targets, fraudsters are known to impersonate legitimate brands, travel agencies, airlines, and trusted accommodation booking websites and create fake social media pages. They offer fake holiday packages, accommodation, and transport tickets for air, bus, and rail travel.

Steps to take to avoid falling victim to holiday scams:

• Do not entertain unsolicited calls and never provide any personal information or make agreements with the callers.
• Compare prices being offered to competitors to check whether the deals are too good to be true or match market prices.
• Check whether secure payment methods such as credit cards and PayPal are used.
• Be cautious of persons or businesses that require crypto assets as a payment method.
• Make use of virtual cards when making payments as they often change CVV number for security purposes
• Bogus websites often appear unprofessional, lack clear contact information and a physical address, have suspicious domain names, do not have an SSL certificate or may have an unusual extension like “.info” or “.biz.

What to do if you fall victim to a holiday scam

• Open a case with the South African Police Service
• Report to the financial institution used to transfer the funds and provide them with the case number and full details of what happened
• Report incident to the National Consumer Commission.

Read the FIC’s holiday scams report for more information on how to avoid falling victim.