Holidaymakers lose out in Cumbria treehouse scam

The owner of a treehouse holiday home said fraudsters had used her business to target holidaymakers.

Julie Simpson said a scam website had used photographs of her business, Faraway Treehouses, in Kirklinton, Cumbria, offering fake holidays.

She said she had reported the scam to the government’s National Cyber Security Centre and the website had been taken down.

Seven people have told Ms Simpson they lost money through the fraud and she said she was “really concerned” more people had been tricked.

“Apparently they were offering prices that were really too good to be true,” Ms Simpson said.

“Luckily my friend alerted me to it so I was able to report it to the government.”

Which? consumer expert Rob Lilley-Jones said he was hearing reports of this kind of fraud “more and more”.

Mr Lilley-Jones said being asked to make bank transfer payments should be a red flag and to always pay for holidays with a credit card because this was the “best chance of getting the money back”.

He also said various websites could be used to carry out reverse image searches to check if a picture was genuine.

“This is something that is really prevalent at the moment, especially at this time of year when people look ahead to booking holidays,” he said.

“There are a few things you can look out for, the main one being that the scammer will do their best to get you to pay outside of an official website.”