DATE OF REPORT nbsp;   22 March 05   
 
TYPE REPORT nbsp;   Informational awareness 
 
DESCRIPTIONnbsp;    Security Awareness - Airline Ticket Fraud


The following information is being provided to help with fraud prevention.

A truly new and important piece of information to share is:

Use caution when purchasing airline tickets online.  The following information was submitted 
by a contracted travel office of a US agency.    The following airline ticketing Internet websites 
have been identified to be scams.

www.BusySky.net
www.CheapClouds.com
www.CrazyTickets.net
www.SubmitPrice.net

These sites attract customers by undercutting airline ticket prices offered elsewhere.   
They capture your credit card information, including account number, expiration date, 
and CVV (an anti-fraud security feature on credit cards).  The customer receives a message
stating that the credit card transaction has been declined, followed by instructions to wire  
funds for payment of the tickets.

This scam is unlike the usual phishing scam.  The thieves do not initiate contact.   
The customer initiates contact by performing a web search for the best ticket prices.  
This creates a false perception of legitimacy.  When successful, the thieves will  
have obtained the customers' credit card information (sufficient to do mail order, phone
order, or internet order), the customers' funds (if wired), and deposit account information  
(origination of wire). Federal authorities are currently pursuing these scammers. 
 

Which "contracted travel office of a US agency"? And WHO identified these websites as scams? Frankly, your post looks like a scam to me.

By the way, AOL is investigating these websites as potential phishing scams, so if you have information to the contrary, why not give it to the proper authorities rather than posting it on a travel site?

Susan - Italiano has quite a few posts here, so it's unlikely that this one isn't real. And how could it be a scam????? He's not asking for money from you.

Also, Italiano is not posting this info here in lieu of giving it to the authorities. Although the source is not indicated, this likely came from an official source and is posted here as a warning to fellow travelers not to use the sites. What's wrong with that?

I agree, I'd like to have the source of info. But in any event, I wouldn't have trusted those sites even before this post, so it doesn't matter much to me.

This does not surprise me and I appreciate Italiano mentioning it here.
Several of recently posted on one such site that came up on Google when you entered "discount airline tickets" or anything similar. I'm trying to remember the name now -- maybe it was even the BusySky mentioned above. And also I seem to recall a question about CrazyTickets here.

Several of us tried to call the phone numbers on the one site only to have it constantly say busy or not available, and it seemed more and more obvious that it was a total scam website, despite how professional it looked. It seemed to operate just like the description above -- offereing amazing bargains for tickets, then as one person said, then telling you the credit card was declined. We haven't heard back from the victim of that one that I know of.

I just checked and BusySky and CrazyTickets have both been shut down.

wsantssomesun,

Don't know what you checked, but both sites are up and running.

Sorry my mistake. I typed in .com for each and it came up as nothing. You are right BlueSky is up and running.

I guess I have a diferent take on this...Yes I appreciate the info from Italiano but who actually uses travel sites for air tickets beyond those big advertised ones or the airlines propritary web sites? Would you trust buying from American and Orbitz or would you try to save $20 by using Cheapclouds.com?

I'll probaly get some neg feedback for my take but I think some common sense in needed when buying on the internet.

weimer - I agree that most would know better without such a warning. But these sites only exist because people do fall prey to them.

There are plenty of people who are trusting and not particularly internet savvy. It simply never occurs to them that a site that's out there would be fraudulent. Or, something about this particular site is good enough to convince them that it's legitimate.

Either way, these warnings hurt no one (except the criminals) and may help. Why not?

Italiano is quite right with his post. Those sites are all out to take your money with no goods in return. I have lost $9556 USD to Busysky.net so I am now on the warpath to tell the world about these rogues and their scam sites. There are more sites in this family and the full list to date that I have researched is as follows:

www.busysky.net
www.CheapClouds.com
www.CrazyTickets.net
www.SubmitPrice.net
www.aircentral.net
www.superfares.biz
www.bookingsaver.com
www.happyticket.net
www.flyjumbo.net
www.bestflight.net

Some are not always available but they do resurrect them again just to rotate them.
KW

Thank you, Italiano and Whelk, for posting. I have been looking for relatively inexpensive airfare (doesn't seem to exit) to Europe for this summer and might have been tempted by one of these sites. It is good to be reminded to be careful!