What is the background to morairaway.com?
It is a website that was set up nine months ago to sell "Holiday Villas and Apartments for Rental in Moraira, Costa Blanca, Javea, Denia (Spain)," according to its own website, which is now unavailable and 'Under Construction.'

Where was it based?
The company was nominally based in Malaga - but the website is believed to have originated in India. A question posed on Yahoo in India about what is Morairaway.com gave the following fulsome response: "A one-stop destination for experiencing the best holiday in the beautiful seasides of Moraira, Spain."

The company also apparently had an office, or travel agent in Paris, according to one victim, Eric Rzepka of Paris, "with one worker who is now unemployed and without any news from her boss."

Morairaway advertised its site on at least two large, British-based rentals site Holiday-Rentals.co.uk and Holidaylettings.co.uk as well as at least one other, in Spain.

Morairaway.com: the victims

Possibly hundreds of families have lost their summer holidays as the Spanish villa website shuts down and owners disappear

Britons lose Spanish villa holidays as morairaway.com shuts down

Police called in as scale of travel bookings mount after Malaga-based site shuts down and owners remain uncontactable

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• Britons lose Spanish villa holidays as morairaway.com shuts down

Who are these British-based sites?
Holiday Lettings is a UK-based site (with no sister sites based elsewhere), is only available in English and all advertisers are direct customers of Holiday Lettings. That said, its advertisers are based worldwide as is its users - one-third of visitor traffic comes from outside the UK.

Homeaway, the parent company of Holiday-Rentals, operates in 12 countries. The sites act as a classified agent and pass on enquiries, rather than take bookings themselves. They make their money by charging for adverts by time and position on the site.

Did they check that morairaway.com was a genuine advertiser?
Both companies are at pains to stress that the normal checks were made and nothing suspicious was flagged up.

As Kate Stinchcombe, a spokeswoman for holidaylettings.co.uk, told us yesterday: "We did as many checks as we can. We have a number of checks that flag up suspicious behaviour, such as firms using multiple IP addresses or the payment process not correlating with addresses supplied.

"We use software and inhouse systems, while a number of our customer services team creating the adverts also saw nothing. They (morairaway) did everything right, and behaved like an average advertiser."

However, it is not the first time this has happened. As The Sunday Times reported in July, 2008, a fraudster in Mallorca also managed to con at least one British couple out of a £700 deposit - for a villa that featured on Holiday-Rentals.co.uk.

So what happened next?
Customers made inquiries through the sites and direct to morairaway.com. They paid in full and were promised full details two weeks before departure. As the holiday season neared, many customers had not received details, answers to emails or phone calls and alarm bells began to ring.

One customer, Parminder Chana of Essex even flew to Alicante to investigate - and established from Spanish police in the area that no villa existed at the address he had been given in Javea. Mr Chana made a complaint to police who launched the investigation.

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