Just made a account to write this, i haven't been feeling well these past few days, i'm trying to be a bit vague about what happened because i haven't told anyone else yet (aside from the cops).
I'm usually doing all my online payments throw Paypal, i don't know what the fuck was wrong with me this time and pushed me to do it through banking transfer (at my bank) .
How it happened : a few weeks ago i make a online post on a website about looking for a place to rent , a few days after i get a phone message from a person saying that he has a place for a xxx$ price (the price was kinda low and was the first signal that i ignored, though i've seen similar priced apartments online but very few) and gives me a mail address for more info about the apartment . I mail him that and by the evening he sends me the info and a few photos, all looks great and i'm excited, he also says that he only rents through AirBnB, and i'm like sure (i've never used it before , so i go and make a account). Then he sends me the "airbnb" link using bitly , i've seen people using it online to shorten links before and don't think much about it, i see airbnb in the link the page looks legit, especially since i've never used airbnb before.
I go to the payment options and since i didn't have enough on my credit card i use the banking transfer option (it was to a different country: Ireland) , get 4 pages everything looks alright (have to stress again that i never used airbnb before) , didn't even notice that it was ARNB ATS instead of AIR BNB above Iban, and next day i make the payment, the i send a scanned copy of the payment to the fake airbnb mail address, after getting the "confirmation" the owner of the place says that he will come friday with the keys.
Thursday i get a mail with the time when we should meet, then friday comes and i get a mail that he can't come and if i can wait until monday if not i can ask for my money back (his excuse was another Red flag that i ignored and chose to believe). I reply that i can wait until monday, monday comes and he tells me that he can't come and i should ask for a refund. I mail again to the fake air bnb support account and they say i'll get my money back in 24-48 h, as the days pass and i'm not seeing my money back i'm starting to do research in to scams regarding airbnb, then i go to my bank and they tell me they can't do anything and if the money are not back soon after the 48h i should go to the police.
By this point i should be drowning in red flags, i downloaded the airbnb app and there were no payments, i logged in the account and there were no payments made, but i still chose to believe that everything will be fine. Even after going to the police and being told that i got fucked, i still believed until today when i saw the fake airbnb page disappeared.
The police told me that they are gonna try, but since the payment was done to a bank in another country , their hands are tied and won't be able to do much, i'm 99.9% sure that i won't get my money back.
The past few days have been really awful : couldn't sleep properly , couldn't eat ... i just don't know how to deal with this anymore, i haven't told anyone yet and i'm to afraid to do so, i just feel everything is gonna break in to pieces when it gets out...
tl;dr: got scammed with a fake airbnb page, made a banking transfer to another country, went to the police and they told me i'm fucked.
Submitted March 09, 2018 at 07:41AM by Reviador http://ift.tt/2p1NYJ5
