Tens of thousands of dollars in fraudulent bookings have hit several travel agencies. In October 2017, international law enforcement agencies detained 195 individuals suspected of airline ticket fraud during a five-day sting operation.
Monica Eaton-Cardone, CIO of Global Risk Technologies and COO of Chargebacks911, said that some book lavish vacations for themselves using purloined credentials. Others assume the identity of a real travel agent, use stolen credit cards to book travel arrangements and resell the flight tickets or vacation package to an unwitting consumer for cash, leaving the traveler or agent to suffer the loss. In some cases, travel providers are defrauded by actual customers who complete a trip and then file a chargeback to obtain a full refund of the purchase price.
Recently, the IATA has calculated annual fraud losses to be in excess of USD 1 billion for air carriers alone. Meanwhile, the American Hotel & Lodging Association (AHLA) found that the percentage of travelers snared by fraudulent websites nearly quadrupled in just two years, from 6% in 2015 to 22% in 2017, when scammers racked up 55 million hotel bookings worth almost USD 4 billion. And though there are no definitive estimates of travel agency losses, a number of individual agents admit they were tricked into processing fraudulent transactions worth USD 20,000 or more.
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