This will be of interest to all those who offer self catering,B/B or. fishing/activity holidays. I've had about 6 dodgy enquiries for bookings this year,from bogus agencies,usually with hotmail accounts and mobile phone numbers made to look like normal std landline no.s.One even had a convincing website.
These people want to book a holiday,usually for clients at fairly short notice.They offer to pay the full price or large deposit by credit card.The general idea is as follows.....they pay the price of the holiday plus a larger amount,say upto a figure of say £3000,they then ask you to take out the cost of the holiday and send the remainder to a fictitious car hire firm(in order to keep credit charge costs down..)
They then badger you to send this amount quickly in order to maintain the booking.Unless you are trusting do not send any money over(usually by Western Union) as their funds to you will not clear,however yours to them might,that's the last you will hear from them.
I actually spoke to one of these guys just to see how this scam worked and asked him where his clients where going to.....after a slight pause I was told Alicante.Surprise surprise,a "Tour Operator"with no idea of Spain.
In A nut shell,if any enquries you receive look in any way different from the norm,be careful,they like to do everthing by email and don't like being contacted.

Ian