A blog on holiday-home-rental.co.uk yesterday was entitled: "Morairaway Scandal – Time for a bonding product ?"

Author Rob Barham said today: "My advice is for people booking villas to be vigilant and ask for testimonials etc and also for holiday home owners to check out the "competition" in their local area and alert the rental directory websites of something suspicious.

"My opinion is that there is scope for consumer protection to be introduced in some way. The holiday rental directories need to come together to create one recognised scheme / badge as well as working together to ensure scammers are blocked from using all sites.

"As I wrote in the blogpost, my concern is that it just seems worryingly easy to setup a scam like this so there will be more."

Q&A: the morairaway.com villa 'swindle'

The fallout from the shutdown of the Spanish villa website has caused widespread questions about what happened

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

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

Related Links

• Q&A: the morairaway.com villa 'swindle'

• Morairaway.com: the victims

Holidaymakers are also angry: Sarah Tatlow, whose family have lost £2,300, is threatening legal action against holidaylettings.co.uk.

Leonie Waardeloo. of The Netherlands, is also promising action against Holiday-rentals, whose fraud guarantee only applies in 4 of the 12 countries it operates in - and not Holland.

Both sites have stressed that it takes extensive manual and automated steps to try and spot fraud, including checking of 'moving' IP addresses and a series of other measures.

Said the spokeswoman for Holidaylettings.co.uk: "To put this situation in proportion to the 1.2m booking enquiries we will generate this year, we have had 42 holidaymakers affected by those behind morairaway.com.

"While we will continue to assess the need for holiday home letting to be regulated as the industry grows we are confident that better communication to and education of our holidaymakers, combined with increased investment in and development of fraud prevention will prove successful in better protecting consumers."

In a police statement to Timesonline, a spokesman confirmed they were looking to the case.

It said: "The Thames Valley Police Economic Crime Unit is currently assessing an alleged overseas holiday payment fraud to ascertain who has jurisdiction regarding the complaint and to that end, who the most appropriate law enforcement agency is to deal with the matter.

"As the investigation is on-going, it would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage.”

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