Scamming Travel Agents and Travel insurance Fraud

Are you planning a trip this summer? Travel scams and travel fraud are more common than you think — and in this episode of Scams, Hacks and Frauds, we expose two real cases that could save your holiday.

Travel Fraud Case 1 — The Travel Agent in a Ponzi Scam:
Lynn Barlow ran one of the most audacious travel fraud schemes in recent UK history. Posing as a legitimate travel agent, Lynn scammed customers out of holidays they'd already paid for, running a Ponzi-style fraud that ultimately stole up to £2.6 million. She faked cancer to avoid arrest, forged bank letters, and intercepted her mother's mail — before being sentenced to 9 years in prison on 10 counts of fraud and money laundering.

Travel Fraud Case 2 — The Nepal Helicopter Scam:
A sophisticated travel insurance fraud saw tour guides and helicopter operators in Nepal conspire to fabricate medical emergencies, fraudulently billing insurance companies for fake rescues. In some cases tourists were deliberately made ill. 32 people have now been convicted.

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We publish new content every other Monday. The short time our episodes save your wallet, and help protect your family.

If you like shows like "The Perfect Scam" or "Darknet Diaries" then this show might be for you.  

On our website you’ll find more computer hacking, identity fraud, impersonation, consumer rights and Romance Scams.  To find these and to access our transcripts, visit us at www.scamshacksandfrauds.com.

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Transcript

As the Summer Travel season begins in the Northern Hemisphere, and our Southern Cousins plan their ski trips, Scammers are rubbing their hands in glee at the opportunities for fraud and scams that can cheat you out of your trip, or even worse.  This week, On Scams, Hacks and Frauds we’re going to cover two travel scam stories,  how to stay safe from these and also talk about whether or not Travel insurance can help you out of these jams.

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Before we start, the YouTube Algorithm has a real hard time telling the difference between a warning about scams, and an actual scam, so we really rely on you to help get the word out.  Please share this show with anyone you know who’s booking a trip this summer so we can help keep them safe from Scams and Fraud.

Imagine you and your friends have decided to take a trip of a lifetime, and you are going golfing for two weeks - all inclusive so you don’t even have to worry about food.  You’ve managed to get a great price, so you pay your money and you and your friends go.  You fly out, arrive at the hotel, and everything seems fine, and you spend a couple of days on the Links.

But on day 4, you get a call from Reception, and are asked to come to the Manager’s office.. So you do and you’re told that your travel agent, Lyne Barlow has only paid for 3 days of your trip.   What would you do?

The victim and the manager attempted to call Lyne and text Lyne, but got nothing in reply.  It soon became clear that Lyne had scammed them both.

But this wasn’t the start of Lyne’s adventures with Fraud; it was the beginning of the end.

Lyne began her scams in 2015, stealing from her own mother.  Her father had died suddenly in the workplace, and this had resulted in a significant payout to her mother, so Lyne convinced her mother to let her look after the money.

Lyne became known in her community for lavish parties with Red Carpets and Snow machines, for Thirsty Thursdays in her home with friends where she provided high priced wines, and lavish gifts during charity drives, and always wearing the latest designer clothes paired with designer bags.

In 2018, as the money started to run out, she convinced her mother that the money was being invested in her Husband’s business, despite that business being formed in a way where this wouldn’t technically be possible.   She also convinced a friend to invest £100k of that friend’s mother’s money in her husband’s business.  She provided fake statements showing profits and dividends to show it was successful.  She was also intercepting her mother’s mail, and by the end had 5 bin bags full of her mother’s post to cover up her fraud.

But the money still continued to drain, and Lyne needed a new scam to keep what was becoming a Ponzi scheme running.

So she started working as a Travel agent in 2018.  To build up her client base, she offered amazing deals. One holiday, she had to pay £4000 for what she sold for a mere £1200…  Maybe this was just to build up her business initially, but you need to keep having money come in to cover the difference.

Lyne would use one customer’s booking deposit to fund another’s trip.  Some customers would travel without any problems, others, like our golfing party would only see parts booked, others would call the airline and the hotel and find there was no booking at all.

So as you always do in a Ponzi scheme fraud, Lyne needed another scam.  As most of the world started to worry about Covid in early 2020, she decided that she had cancer.  In fact, she’d claim to have cancer twice - I don’t mean she told two people that she had cancer, I mean she’d tell the world she had one bout of cancer, then recover, only to get a second round of Cancer.  The goal here wasn’t to benefit directly by running a charity scam or anything like that - although she did use it to milk money from friends and relatives - it was just to effectively guilt her existing victims into leaving her alone… saying things weren’t booked because she was that unwel that she just couldn’t complete everything, and that she wasn’t taking new bookings just trying to sort things out, but she didn’t stop taking new bookings, as the ponzi scam still needed money to feed itselt.  Here’s an example of one of her emails trying to play on this from May 2020 

In April 2020, Lyne’s mother’s bank wrote to the mother, telling her that her home was at risk due to a lack of mortgage payments - Lyne’s mail intercept had failed on this occasion, and her mother was panicking…. So did Lyne come clean about her scam?  No.  Instead she forged a letter from the bank claiming that this was an administrative error and that her mortgage was paid off.

But this is also when the police start to get involved, and they interviewed Lyne at her home.  When she answered the door, she was the very picture of a cancer patient.  Her hair was covered, she had a stick, and this being covid time, she wore a mask.  The police were convinced she was a cancer patient, and viewing her as high risk if she was taken into custody of getting covid, and facing serious implications if she did get covid with cancer, the decision was made not to arrest her at that time.

Do you think that stopped her scamming?  No.  Her fraudulent travel agent scheme continued, and things escalated.  Her scam victims began to visit her at her home, demanding refunds, and at one point, she even sees part of her home targeted in an arson attack.

By September 2020, the calls to Durham police had themselves reached epidemic levels, with tales from Lyne’s customers telling the police of trips completely unbooked, no record with the airline, no record with the hotel, and no refund forthcoming… To the point where the police are essentially forced, or perhaps shamed, into acting.  Even with Lyne’s cancer and even with the risk from Covid, they feel they have no choice except to arrest her.

The police attended her home to effectuate the arrest, whilst they are questioning her and going through the motions to arrest her, Lyne’s victims are banging on the door and shouting from outside demanding refunds… Meanwhile, her husband is pleading with the police, saying that she can’t be arrested as a cancer patient, and she has chemotherapy in the morning… But the police were unmoved.

Lyne was taken to the police station, and for the photograph she was required to move her head covering, revealling a full head of hair.  She didn’t have cancer, she never had, she wasnt having Chemo, but she was cutting her own hair every morning to leave on her pillow to convince her husband, and to make photographs.  Lyne, as a scammer, had absolutely no shame, scamming not only her mother but also her husband.

By the end, she’d stolen between £1.6 and £2.6 million, depending on whether you believe the Police or the defence. 

She would later be charged with 18 counts, including fraud and money laundering, and in 2023, she admitted to 10 of those and was sentenced to 9 years in prison.  Her admissions include taking £500,000 from one victim alone, probably her mother.  Many of her victims attended the court to describe how their lives had been changed forever because of her fraud.

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According to the UK’s Travel Agent Association, ABTA, fraud in the travel industry happens almost exclusively online; in-person travel agent fraud  is very rare, so if you are using a real travel agent, there’s no immediate need to worry over this story, and there’s probably a lot of truth to that claim from ABTA - we’ve covered already the ongoing issues at Booking Dot Com, which despite making headlines again earlier this year don’t seem to be going away.

The most important rule to learn from this is, if it seems too good to be true, it's probably because it's too good to be true.  If you’re getting prices or quotes for anything - not just travel but also work around your home, or even when out shopping - if a price is a lot lower than everyone else there is probably a very good reason why it’s a lot lower, and if there’s no reasonable explanation for it, like a shop going out of business, then unless you’re willing to lose the money you spend on it, don’t do it.  Travel agents are packaging tickets, hotels and other experiences, but they’re getting them from someone else and they have to be paid for, and whilst its true that they get get wholesale prices cheaper than you can get direct in a lot of cases, they can’t then sell them to you for half price they get it for.

And if you’re making a big purchase, consider using a credit card.  You should check the exact rules where you are, but in many countries, if you are scammed, or even just the company goes out of business or there’s some other problem with what you’re buying, you often have better rights as a consumer because you have that credit card.  We’ve previously talked about Chargebacks, and Chargebacks aren’t just the bane of scammers; they’re an important tool in your toolbox to keep you safe.

Travel insurance may not help in situations.  Travel insurance often has sections for covering supplier failure - that is things like your airline or hotel going out of business, but that language often does not cover scams.  Check your policy wording, but you might find a credit card is more effective cover against a scam or an airline going out of business - but it does not replace travel insurance.

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I want to follow this with a good news story, but the good news is kinda limited.  I’m happy to say that the next scam has seen 32 people behind it arrested, convicted, and sentenced.  But whats really disappointing is that its a scam that has taken years to be taken seriously, has seen threats of economic collapse to make governments take it seriously, and has seen victims lose the trip of a lifetime - trips costing tens of thousands of dollars - as well as victims being forced to undergo unneccessary medical treatment - just so some greedy scammers can engage in insurance fraud.

This fraud was well established in 2016, thats right, ten years ago, when AFP’s then new Nepal correspondent Annabel Symington started looking into this.  She in her words, started hearing rumours about middlemen profiteering from unnecessary helicopter trips, and noticed that 20 new helicopters had been delivered to the country from Airbus in only 5 years, and that private helicopters in Nepal fly more than helicopters in any other country.

Now, to a certain point, that’s understandable.  Mount Everest is more than 4% of Nepal’s GDP, and is about half of its tourism industry.  There are towns on the way to its famous base camp that surive just on tourists heading up the mountain- tens of thousands each year… But As famous as Mount Everest and the other Himalaya’s are, Nepal is by no means the only country with famous mountains to climb, so something seemed out of the ordinary.

The sheer number of these flights was astounding, and double billing common - Helicopter operators would try to get multiple tourists into one helicopter, and bill all their insurance companies full price for the same trip.  Trekking guides were paid $500 per rescue - a vast amount more than the $22 they make a day -  so they were incentivised to get more people into the Helicopters.

…So they did.  On the benign side, any time one of their tourists would have any sort of illness, they’d play it up.  We don’t mean to play down Altitude sickness, but they were calling Helicopters when the first symptoms were being felt, rather than telling their tourists to head to a lower altitude, which is standard medical advice - guides would even go as far as to encourage people not to do that and take the helicopter instead. When Annabel looked into this, 8% of tourists to Mount Everest were being medivaced out… That's almost 1 in 10.

In August 2018 an Insurance company called Traveller Assist decided that it was going to put a stop to this, and threatened the Nepalese government with refusing to cover trips to Mount Everest, which, if matched by other insurers could effectively kill Nepal’s tourism industry so the Nepalese government did take this serious and started demanding information from operators when rescue flights are called, and threw out the intermediaries and was so convinced that their plan would work that the Katmandu Post on 1 September 2018 reported the government had declared victory over the fake rescue scam by throwing out the intemedaries.  Spoiler alert, they had not won the war.  We should also mention what Traveller Assist was doing here was also a bit dubious, as they claimed to represent other companies when they didn’t, and used fake articles to support its attempts to take over the emergency transport industry itself.  They don’t seem to be around anymore

Then things went quiet, but the scam continued.

Nepal Police’s Central Investigation Bureau reopened the case in 2025, and it won’t surprise you to learn that the fraud had not stopped, only evolved.  They looked back 2 and a half years and found almost $20 million in Fraudulent claims to insurers. One charter firm, Mountain Rescue Service, conducted 171 fake rescues, and another, Nepal Charter Service, was on the hook for another 75.  In one case, a Helicopter rescued 4 tourists on the same day, at the same time, but invoiced each one as separate flights,  charging the insurance companies $31,100 for one flight, and another $11k in hospital costs.  One Unnamed Insurance company official is quoted as saying most of these rescues only see hospital visits of less than one hour.  This affected at least 4782 tourists.

But it gets worse than that.  Tour guides were still getting paid to get their tourists onto these helicopters, so they had a couple of options.  In some cases, they’d just tell their tourists once they reached base camp to just pretend to be sick, and they’d get a free Helicopter ride, saving them the long walk back to civilisation.  Now, to be clear, in that case, the tourist is also committing insurance fraud… But if that didn’t work, they would make their tourists actually sick.

Guides and hotel staff on the trek are trained to identify early signs of Altitude sickness, and were telling their charges to take a medication called Diamox, which is the correct medication to take for altitude sickness, so any searches online will show this is the right thing to take, but the staff will tell their charges to take this with a lot of water - excessive amounts… And that extra step, rather than gradual rehydration, makes the symptoms look much worse; and in at least one case, baking powder was added to tourists' food to induce symptoms that resemble altitude sickness. 

The good news is that now 32 people are in Jail, but given the number of companies, tour guides, and even hospitals involved, and what happened last time someone said mission accomplished, it would be naive to think this is the end of the fraud.

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So, to start with, if someone is offering you a “Free” Helicopter ride to be paid for by your travel insurance, and you don’t have a legitimate medical condition, that is insurance fraud.  If you take that offer, it is a crime pretty much everywhere.  Just because others have gotten away with it, doesn’t mean you will, and do you really want to run the chance of spending the rest of your days in a foriegn prison?  Just don’t do it.

That said, if you are travelling internationally, ensure you have travel insurance and the right cover for what you’re doing.  High-risk activities like mountain climbing are obviously common exclusions, but you might be surprised to learn that activities like golf, Skiing, or even being on a cruise ship may require additional cover.  Additionally, some areas of the world may not be included in your cover, and those areas might surprise you… Here in the UK, North America is often not included as standard, even in so-called “Worldwide” cover.

If you have travel insurance packaged with a Bank account or credit card, there’s another pitfall to watch out for.  These products will often say in the fine print that if you have pre-existing condition, you need to contact them first, before even taking out the account or card.  If you’re paying for a bank account or a credit card, thinking it's going to cover you, it might be a nasty shock to discover that you’ve actually been paying for nothing.  Call your provider to check what this actually covers, and if there are any exclusions that might render it worthless.

Lastly, make sure you’re aware of the risks of where you travel and what activities you engage in.  Your country probably has a website telling you about the risks you face in certain countries. Make sure you read it.  If you are going into high altitudes, make sure you know what Altitude sickness looks like and what you should do about it.  It might be a rest, rehydration, and perhaps a lower altitude can prevent an unnecessary medivac, and an early end to your trip.

Thats it for this episode of Scams, Hacks and Frauds.  If you’re know someone planning a trip this summer, please share this epsiode with them, and make sure you also check out our episode on booking.com as that fraud still appears to be continuing, depsite recent high profile media interest.