Gad in the direction: how Russians are deceived when buying burning vouchers
A wave of scams related to the sale of burning vouchers swept across Russia. Details can be found in the Izvestia article.
The founders fled with the money
In early April 2025, the police received a statement from Yulia Sudarikova, a resident of Moscow. She said that she had been deceived by a travel company. In January 2025, Yulia wrote to the company's work account via WhatsApp messenger (owned by Meta, whose activities are recognized as extremist and banned in the Russian Federation) to book a tour for the summer of 2025. Yulia had previously booked tours with this company. On January 22, she arranged a trip and chose a tour worth 507 thousand rubles. On January 27, she came to the company's office and signed a contract, making an advance payment of 260 thousand rubles in cash. But when Yulia announced in February that she was ready to deposit the remaining amount, she was asked to "wait a bit." On April 3, the manager called the girl and informed her that all the managers' personal accounts were blocked, and the founders of the company allegedly stole the clients' money. The employee noted that now she could not do anything on her own, and advised her to contact the police. The issue of initiating a criminal case is being resolved, the Izvestia source explained.
— It is possible that the employees were used blindly by the people who organized the company. They waited until the employees had secured several "fat" clients for them, transferred the prepayment to their accounts and disappeared," the law enforcement officer believes.
A trip to a non-existent boarding house
In Omsk, there was a scandal with the sale of vouchers to a non-existent boarding house in Abkhazia. So far, two victims are known, the regional police department reported. In one case, a 43-year-old local resident transferred 117 thousand rubles to the administrators of an Internet resource, and in exchange received a copy of the contract and a receipt. Later, on the official website of the Ministry of Tourism of Abkhazia, the man found a message stating that the Sputnik boarding house, where he was going to take his family, did not exist. Later, the police received a statement from a 46-year-old teacher, who also bought the advertisement for a non-existent tour on the Internet and paid 71.5 thousand rubles for it.
The site where the residents of Omsk were deceived is currently blocked, but Izvestia found a saved copy of it. The editors also found a link between this page and another fake website, through which vouchers to the non-existent Rodnik boarding house in Yalta were sold a year ago. The system saved the template of the first phishing page, which was taken by the scammers as a sample. This may indicate that scammers continue to deceive people using the same cliche.
In 2024, the fake page of Rodnik was exposed on social networks — photos of the hotel were stolen from the websites of hotels in Belarus and Turkey. There is another tourist accommodation facility at the address indicated on the portal.
— They look for photos without a watermark, download, sometimes "mirror" the picture, and then pass it off as the original, — said a representative of the travel industry on condition of anonymity. — It often happens that people visit fake pages of real-life hotels and make an advance payment through them. And the deception becomes clear already upon check-in at the hotel.
Checking for lice
— Before booking, you should check the availability of the website from the tour operator and agents acting on his behalf, — Elena Gladysheva, managing partner of the Moscow law firm RI-Consulting, member of the MRO Delovaya Rossiya, told Izvestia. — This can be done in a special section of the official website of the Ministry of Economic Development.
The lawyer clarified that tour operators operate through their agents. Agents sign contracts with tour operators and work on a franchise basis.
It would not be superfluous to make sure that the client is dealing with an active legal entity. This can be done by checking the agency's INN (the information must be on the website) on the page of the invalid INN service for legal entities or by obtaining an extract from the Unified State Register of Legal Entities.
"We're checking the OKVED codes here," the lawyer says. "Why?" What if the legal entity you contacted and were deceived by the beautiful advertisement carries out its activities in agriculture?
She also advises checking the INN agent in the Transparent Business service for signs of a one-day company.
The subtleties of the contract
An agreement with a tourist takes an average of 20 thousand characters of text (especially carefully you need to study the sections on the obligations and responsibilities of the parties) and must have an appendix containing clear criteria for the trip: departure date, location, information about tourists and other essential conditions, including the ticket number and authorization code.
The lawyer recalled that recently there has also been an Electronic Travel Package service, a state information resource focused on protecting the rights of tourists and transparency of the activities of professional market participants.
Payment must be made according to the details specified in the contract.
— It is not necessary to make a cash payment, as well as transfer money to an individual's account (even if it is your long-time friend and you have "done this 1000 times"). The risk of not paying for your travel product from the tour operator, or not booking flights (at least back) increases many times.
It is also important to check the availability of the discount promised by the travel agent from the tour operator on the official website, says Gladyshev's lawyer.
— Discounts should be provided only by the tour operator himself, not by his agent. Increased discounts are almost always equal to the likelihood of being misled.
Insurance
— Insurance is an additional product, whether it is worth spending money on it or not is up to you to decide, — says the lawyer. — However, this is the minimum guarantee of your safe departure and return.
When booking online, you should also check the payment system's website due to the risk of phishing. In addition, the lawyer believes that when ordering through an aggregator site, it is necessary to carefully read the rules of the site before working with them.
— It is necessary to understand here that these services are only a platform that hosts offers from travel agencies and tour operators. It is necessary to check not the site, but the offer and the person offering the tourist product," says the lawyer.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
