Durban - Unsuspecting travel agents are being taken to the cleaners by crafty conmen and it is costing them a fortune – and even their businesses.
Agents, desperate for bookings and under pressure to meet their targets at the end of the month when “checks and balances go out of the window”, were particularly vulnerable, a Durban tour and travel operator told the annual meeting of the KwaZulu-Natal branch of the Association of South African Travel Agents (Asata) at the Beverly Hills Hotel, uMhlanga Rocks.
And it was not just the junior agents who were hoodwinked into issuing airline tickets to fraudsters, said Dinesh Naidoo, the group operations director of the Serendipity Worldwide Group, who had done extensive research on the risks facing the industry.
He told later of a Durban area agent who had to cough up R1.2-million to pay for services that had been illegally obtained by conmen.
Agents are daily bombarded with e-mails from Nigeria asking them for tickets for their “clients” and giving credit card details. But the credit cards have been cloned and are being used fraudulently. Agents are often provided with copies of passports which are also fraudulent.
When the real owner of the credit card gets his bill and realises it was used illegally, he will want a refund. – Daily News