The scammer told an advisor at Bedbank, part of the Vertical Travel Group, she was Janette Healey from Shenfield-based The Travel Boutique and she was having trouble making a booking online.
She then offered to give Healey’s Abta number as proof of ID – but unbeknownst to the impersonator, Healey’s husband is Vertical boss Peter Healey, and Healy herself recruited the advisor that the scammer was attempting to dupe.
"Once I heard the call, I started to think – have they done it to anyone else?," Healey told TTG. "Some operators don’t have any security checks in place, which is a big problem and opens them to issues like this.
"Some smaller agencies don’t have the capacity to pay this sort of money if it does turn out to be scam, and there are no protections in place for us if we lose that money."
Healey urged operators to do more to protect against scammers, by implementing additional layers of security when taking a booking from an agent.
"I felt quite exposed when it happened," Healey continued. "I had a sleepless night last night, I got up early this morning worrying about all the other bookings and then I heard it had happened to another company.
"There has got to be some big questions asked of us as an industry as to what can be done about this sort of thing."
