If you have paid a deposit on a flat that does not exist, the first call is to your bank, asking it to have the receiving bank hold the transfer, and the second, the same day, is a police report, because only once a report exists can the court freeze the receiving account and find out whose name it is in. If the order is reversed and the first days go on messaging the so-called landlord or waiting for the property portal to reply, the money will have left that account by the time your bank’s warning arrives, and everything will depend on identifying someone with assets. Alerting the portal and gathering evidence happen in parallel, without delaying either of those two steps.
I handle these cases myself. I am Luis Jurado Cano, a criminal lawyer registered with the A Coruña Bar Association under number 6317, at Perseus & RC Abogados. This page covers three different situations, the deposit on a long-term rental, the booking of a holiday apartment and the purchase of a home from someone who could not sell it, because each needs its own order. What all fraud cases share, including penalties and time limits, is on the general fraud page.
What comes first after paying a rental deposit
An ordinary bank transfer can still be held if the receiving bank is warned before the fraudster moves it. A Bizum payment cannot be reversed, but the phone number you sent it to is linked to an account whose holder the court can identify. If you paid by card, ask your bank about a chargeback, and if you were led to enter your card details on a page imitating the portal, that charge was not authorised by you and the bank has to answer for it.
Next, report it to the police with everything you have. Take a screenshot of the advert with its web address before the portal removes it, and bring the full conversation, the contract you were sent and the copy of the landlord’s ID, which often belongs to another person who was also deceived. If you sent your own passport or ID, say so in the report. I explained how this scheme works in the fake rental on Idealista.
The portal comes third. Telling it gets the advert taken down and the account data preserved for the court. It will not refund you, because it only hosts adverts and never received your money.
In another version the flat does exist. The person renting it to you is a tenant living there, someone who has the keys for another reason, or an owner who had already let it to someone else. Spanish law treats this as a specific form of fraud punished with one to four years in prison, and here the offender is usually identified from day one, which greatly improves the chances of getting paid.
Holiday lets that nobody managed
The order is the same, with one practical difference. It is usually discovered at the door, with your luggage, far from home. Photograph the building and the letterboxes, save your phone’s location and, if you can, report it there and then, since any police station will take the report. What decides how much comes back is how you paid. Payments made through the booking platform fall under its own protection, and payments made outside it by transfer or Bizum have to be claimed from whoever received them. More detail in scammed on Booking or Airbnb.
When the fraud is the sale of a home
These cases usually happen at the private deposit contract stage, before the deed, because a notary checks the seller’s identity and the Land Registry. We see sales by someone who is not the owner, homes already sold to someone else, and homes sold as unencumbered while carrying a mortgage or an attachment order. The Criminal Code punishes all three with one to four years in prison, and fraud involving a home carries a heavier penalty of one to six years and a fine.
First comes an up-to-date Land Registry extract, because when a property is sold twice it belongs, as a rule, to whoever registered it first. Then a formal complaint to the court, asking it to record a ban on selling or mortgaging the property in the Land Registry while the case lasts and to freeze the seller’s assets. The civil side, unwinding the purchase and recovering what you paid with interest, I handle together with Ana Reza, managing partner of our civil department.
What can be recovered, and from whom
A criminal conviction orders the fraudster to repay you without a separate lawsuit, and joining the case as private prosecutor means you do not depend only on the public prosecutor. If the receiving account belongs to someone who lent it to the fraudster, that person also answers for the money that passed through it. Not every rental that goes wrong is fraud, and a real owner who backs out is a civil matter. If what you bought was a car or a second-hand item, see scams between private buyers and sellers.
Where we are
Rúa Torreiro 13, 3.º C, 15001 A Coruña, Spain. Phone +34 677 841 007. If you live elsewhere or are travelling, we can speak by phone or video call, in English.
Related reading
- Fake rental on Idealista, the deposit you paid and the flat that does not exist
- Scammed on Booking or Airbnb in Spain, what you can recover and who to claim against
- Online scam in Spain, how to recover the money and what the bank must refund
Frequently asked questions
I paid a deposit on a flat by bank transfer and the landlord has stopped answering. What do I do?
Call your bank now, ask it to request that the receiving bank hold and return the transfer, and confirm it in writing. Report it to the police the same day with the advert, the conversation and the payment receipt. Stop writing to the so-called landlord, because every exchange gives them time to move the money.
The owner is real but backed out and kept my deposit. Is that fraud?
Usually not. If the owner is who they say and the flat is theirs, backing out or keeping the deposit is a contract problem, claimed in the civil courts under whatever the reservation document says. It becomes fraud when it turns out they took the same deposit from several people or never meant to let you the flat.
The person who rented me the flat was the tenant, not the owner. Is that a crime?
It can be. Renting out as your own a flat you have no right to dispose of is punished in the Spanish Criminal Code with one to four years in prison. Renting out a room with the owner's written consent is a different matter, and the law allows it. The contract you signed and the Land Registry extract show which case you are in.
I booked a holiday apartment in another part of Spain and it did not exist. Do I have to report it there?
No. You can report it in A Coruña if you paid from here, because in remote fraud the courts treat the offence as committed where the victim made the payment as well. If you found out on arrival, you can also report it at the local police station there.
What should I check before paying a deposit on a rental in Spain?
Ask the Land Registry for a nota simple using the address of the flat. It costs a few euros and shows who owns it and what charges it carries. Compare that name with the ID of the person renting it to you, and do not pay before seeing the flat inside with that person or someone who can prove they represent them.