Group Tour Scam

This Tour Scam is very similar message to the Yacht Charter Scam: viewtopic.php?f=9&t=92618

From: Percy Lugard [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Wednesday, October 28, 2015 4:27 AM
To: undisclosed-recipients:
Subject: RE: Group Tour.


Greetings,

I will be in the country during our leave-period with some of my
colleagues (4 Persons) from the 1st week of December 2015 and we hope to
embark on various tours as part of our vacation plans during our stay.

What are the various ways that you charge for your services, is it hourly
or daily?.

what packages do you offer?.

What dates will you be available?.

Please send me a proposal of what you can offer Throughout December and
New year with the exact dates.

Kindly get back to me if you can handle this for us with the total cost for
everything and also confirm credit cards accepted for payment as we'll like
to firmly secure the booking immediately.

I'll hope to hear from you soon.



Regards,


Engr. Percy Lugard.

Thank you for reporting this scam!

Hi, I just received the exact same message in my tour company! I was going to respond but in a quick google serch on "Percy Lugard" I found this post!!! Thanks a lot for posting this here!

Can you please tell me what do they intend to do in this scam?
And what should we do, just do not reply?

Thank you!

[AlanJones]

It is a credit card scam - the scammer will try to pay with stolen credit card details and ask you to forward an overpayment onto an immaginary third party (possibly a fake travel agent arranging other parts of the non-existent trip) using an untraceble/irreversible method such as Western Union/Moneygram. The scammer is hoping that you will send the money to him and he can pick it up, before the real cardholder notices the fraudulent charges and they are reversed. You would then be down the money that you sent.

The best thing to do is just delete the mail and don't respond.

Wow! We might have been caught if we did not see this post from user "Birder"!
And thanks Alan for all the information, e-mail deleted!
I will report if I detect more scams!

HI Alan,
Thanks, for your explanation how this scam works, I was not aware it. If the email would have been more customised I might have responded. What if somebody has an online booking system and the scammer books and pays a tour twice by a stolen card, than the scammer asks to cancel the 2nd booking and transfer the money to Western Union. The tour operator could be in a big trouble I suppose.

[AlanJones]

There's no legitimate reason that I can think of where a 'retailer' would need to make a refund in any way other than back to the card that was originally charged, so anyone asking for that to happen should be viewed with suspicion. If a tour operator did do it then the end result would be the same, the real cardholder would report both the transactions as fraudulent, resulting in them being reversed and the operator would be down the money sent.