According to an indictment attached to the arrest warrant obtained by PEOPLE, Shray Goel accepted 10,000 reservations for 100 properties — some of which never existed
It won’t happen, but AirBNB should be held partially accountable for having a platform which allows this to happen in the first place. They did nothing to prevent the scheme, and barely helped the victims at all
The guest who booked at the highest price was able to actually stay at the property, and Goel would cancel all other reservations using a “false excuse” as to why the property suddenly became unavailable, according to the indictment.
Goel was FAR from the only host using this approach to scam AirBnB customers out of $$ and ruin vacation plans. I hope the discovery includes the attempts people made to get the platforms to actually do something about the increasingly common behavior from hosts.
I used Airbnb in Malaysia once… That was a cockroach infested hell-hole, Airbnb refused to give me my money back. Great company :(