Scam Calls Are Up - International Travel Services, Luxury Travel Consultants and Corporate Management Consulting
April 2, 2021
Have you been contacted by unsolicited callers lately? Boy, we certainly have. Other aimfair members have too. And the scams are not only about timeshare offers. We received one from foreign language saying he was with Xfinity support and he wanted us to test our speed to confirm a trouble spot has beed fixed. Bottom line was we were to go to www.192300.com, which he said was an Xfinity support site. Do not go there! You are asked to fill out a form that asked for all your personal information - and I mean ALL. We looked up the domain and found that it was formed on March 19, 2021. We looked up the telephone number and found it was an AT&T phone number. Definitely trouble!Anyway, back to scams in the timeshare, more specifically, Vidanta arena. We received the the following email on March 30, 2021:
Hi Bob
Hope all is well with you, Mary Ann and your family.
In case you weren’t aware, I was contacted by another scam travel service this week; however, this one made me think twice as to whether they were credible or not.
I received an offer for a one week rental of our four bedroom Estates in Nuevo Vallarta (attached) for the week of May 29th – for participants in an Optimist Yacht Regatta. I was curious as to how they obtained our information regarding our Estates contact, as usually the information that these scammers have are outdated – such as an old Grand Mayan contract.
So I called and played along. The offer itself looks phony like most of them are. The rep said that they work with Vidanta, which of course I did not believe. I also called Vidanta’s customer service and they confirmed that this is definitely a scam.
The next day I received a call where the display showed the Vidanta main customer service number – 1-800-292-9446. So I answered the call as I recognized the phone number. Normally I don’t even answer if I don’t recognize the phone number. The individual who called me said his name was Manuel Buerra, and that he worked for Vidanta Corporate. He said that Vidanta is working with three travel groups to assist with renting members’ unused weeks to accommodate for events such as this Optimist Yacht Regatta. He was aware of our Estates Contract in detail – even knew the name of our sales rep in Riviera Maya. I asked him how International Travel Services was aware of our Estates Contract details. Manuel stated that Vidanta passed this information to them as we did not explicitly state that our contract information could be shared – with the exception of our contact number. Manuel stated that any firm that ask for our contract number or contact summary page are scammers. The other two travel firms that Manuel claimed that Vidanta works with are Luxury Travel Consultant and Corporate Management Consulting. All pretty vanilla looking names.
To be honest, Manuel almost had me convinced as he seemed very credible and knowledgeable of Vidanta. Then I heard my late mother’s voice tell me that I shouldn’t be so trusting of people who I don’t know. So I told Manuel that I was busy and would call him back to go over the details of the rental. I did a search of the phone number that he asked me to call him back on – 1-866-583-5040. When I searched this number, there is actually an FBI warning where scammers used an authentic FBI phone number to demand payment - such as these guys did with the Vidanta customer service number.
The FBI release can be found at https://www.robesonian.com/news/131337/fbi-issues-warning-on-telephone-scam.
I called this number this morning. The women who answered did not speak good English and all she said was that “this is Vidanta corporate” and asked for my name and Vidanta contract number. I just hung up at that point.
Attached is the email exchange with International Travel Services.
Sorry for the long email Bob; however, I wanted to inform you of this as these scammers are definitely getting more sophisticated – and even had me thinking as to whether they were credible or not.
I called Vidanta again to report this. They said they will investigate. This is the first time they heard of a scammer utilizing their main customer service phone number as a display.
Please feel free to share all of this and the attachment on the Aimfair website.
Happy to discuss further if you like.
Thanks and regards,
Founding Aimfair Member
Thank you! As additional support that International Travel Services is not legitimate consider the following:
- The Better Business Bureau claims the business was a travel agency that is no longer in business.
- The FAX number is not located at the address provided; (469) 393-0494 is in Allen, Texas, between McKinney and Plano, Texas
- The phone number is not located at the address provided; (469) 242-3435 is located on North Pearl Street near John W Caprenter Park.
The bottom line: SCAM