panaji when bengaluru resident waheeda b booked a fiveday tour to dubai for her family she had little inkling that her vacation plans would turn into a nightmare the lady who claims to have booked her flights through a goabased agency had fallen prey to a new online ticket booking scamthe bengaluru resident is not the only one r trivedi d p singh sushmita g and several others from various parts of goa have been duped of their hardearned money by scammers who design similarlooking websites with legitimate addresses and registration information with only the contact number changedaccording to a complaint filed with goa polices cybercrime division cybercriminals are misusing the brands logos and identities of goan travel agencies and then charging money for flight tickets and hotel bookings the scamsters then issue fake flight tickets and hotel reservation details to the unsuspecting customer and then stop responding to callsalarmed by these instances the goa chamber of commerce and industry has issued an alert and asked the authorities to crack down on such fraudonline scamsters sitting in faroff places like mewat begusarai dhubri alwar asansol and surat are creating fraudulent websites in the name and style of reputed travel agents where fake websites are created and people are invited with good offers said gcci president ralph de sousa in a public advisorytoi has not named the travel agent and has withheld the full names of the victimsmoney is taken in advance from innocent people who booked online bona fide believing that it was the website of a reputed travel agency said de sousain october toi had reported how cyber criminals were using google to steal money from tourists trying to book a holiday in goa many hotels have found that their telephone numbers listed online with search engines have been changedupon receiving neither a confirmed ticket nor hotel booking despite paying money the customers dig a bit deeper and get in touch with the actual travel agency and demand for their money to be returned or their ticketswe had not done any bookings for the people who called us and we are unaware who is masquerading as our travel agency we were alarmed to see a website that looks similar to our website with our building address in goa but the contact number and email address were different said the owner of a margaobased agency who filed a complaint with the cyber cellthe public is hereby cautioned not to fall into the trap of making bookings with such websites that turn out to be fake and just a moneymaking racket to cheat people they are using goan addresses said a gcci official