Foreigners using a travel website to find rented accommodation in Malta before they arrive are being duped into paying deposits for non-existent apartments, The Sunday Times has learnt.
Rooms for rent in seemingly plush apartments in Sliema and St Julian's are being offered for competitive prices by a user in the popular Malta 'Housing and Rentals' section of the website justlanded.com, which offers advice and listings to expatriates worldwide.
When would-be travellers e-mail from abroad to say they are interested, the user, who identifies himself as 'Jamie Day', requests a deposit via Western Union or Moneygram, but ceases contact upon receiving payment. The scam was brought to the attention of The Sunday Times by Carolina Seez, a 22-year-old German, and Marian Guyomarc'h, a 21-year-old French woman, who now share an apartment in Swieqi. They did not know each other previously and only discovered they were victims of the same scam while chatting.
Ms Seez showed this newspaper 35 e-mails she exchanged with Jamie Day from July 9 to 28, 2009. She made contact after seeing an advertisement on justlanded.com for a room in an apartment close to Balluta Bay. In the second e-mail she received, she was asked for a €50 deposit via Western Union. Over the course of the e-mail conversations, she received repeated reassurances and was even sent a scan of what the advertiser said was his British passport. This showed a man named Jamie Paul Day, born in Grimsby on September 23, 1978.
When she eventually sent the money on July 24, the man ceased all contact. He would have had to identify himself as Jamie Day when collecting the cash.
"I just felt so cheated. I was about to move to a foreign country and it made me wonder if all people in Malta were like that. Thankfully, I now know they're not," Ms Seez said.
Ms Guyomarc'h showed The Sunday Times similar e-mail exchanges with someone using the same name, which began on November 7. She has a receipt for the €70 she sent as a deposit via Western Union on November 24, but again the man cut off contact.
Posing as a female Spanish teenager on the verge of moving to Malta, The Sunday Times last week found a room advertised on justlanded.com in a modern-looking apartment in Windsor Street, Sliema, for €170 per month.
After sending an e-mail expressing interest, a reply came from 'Jamie', who asked for a €70 deposit via Moneygram. When asked for identification, he sent a scan of a passport with the name and image of 'Jamie Paul Day'. All contact ceased when it was suggested that a friend already in Malta could pay the deposit in person, while an attempt to visit the address in Windsor Street revealed the apartment did not exist.
A 31-year-old Briton named Jamie Paul Day was convicted of credit card fraud in Malta last November and given a three-year probation order. Ms Seez and Ms Guyomarc'h said they attempted to report the scam together at St Julian's police station last Monday, but were informed they had to call Inspector Trevor Micallef, who had arraigned Mr Day last November.
According to the two women, they tried to call Inspector Micallef last Wednesday but there was no answer.
The Sunday Times contacted Insp. Micallef and offered to hand over its exchanges together with the exchanges of the two women. However, he said the women had to report the crime at the police station where the incident took place - even though it was in cyberspace.
Although Mr Day is on a three-year probation order, the police said his whereabouts were unknown.
"He is always changing his address so I can't know where he lives," the inspector said.
According to Simon Lynch, managing director of Just Landed, which is based in Spain, at least five similar complaints related to Malta have been reported to the company since September, and the accounts used have been blocked.
The perpetrator appears to be the same individual, who uses different e-mail addresses and internet protocols, and offers different apartments, but always identifies himself as 'Jamie Day', Mr Lynch said.
His exchange of e-mails with The Sunday Times was sent from an internet cafe in Qawra. Mr Lynch confirmed the perpetrator has been active in the past few days and appears to still be in Malta.
The case appears to be "atypical" according to Mr Lynch, because the perpetrator asks for relatively small amounts, and fraud on the website in other countries, although rare, is usually committed by organised criminal networks based in Africa, not by an individual residing in the country.
The website contains advice about staying safe online and warns users not to send money via Western Union. It uses automated and manual checks to identify fraudulent advertisements, "but when a fraudster is acting in the same way as a real user it is very difficult to catch every instance of this type of crime," Mr Lynch said.
pcooke@timesofmalta.com