How can I tell if this Polish villa for rent is a scam?

I live in the Czech Republic, and using bank transfers to rent out a villa is pretty normal here.
One idea I haven’t seen in the above answers is to find out who owns the property being rented. If you know someone who speaks Polish, a quick Google search found this website, with useful links:
http://www.migrant.info.pl/land-and-mortgage-register.html
You would need to know exactly where the property is, which should be doable from an online map service. If the owner has the same name (or at least surname) as the person renting the villa, you can be more confident in their legitimacy.

I find it interesting that you consider “the bank transfer itself” to be a “Red Flag”. In my opinion, that is the result of media attention on the bad instead of the good.

To address your concern of overreaction, I have a theory that the proportion of completed bank transfers that are instigated with malicious intent is microscopically insignificant compared to “above board” transfers (similar to the fact that we’re 258x more likely to die by choking than during a flight, but the airline stories creating better ratings for the News Companies.)

I tried fairly exhaustively to prove this theory but it’s a tough dataset to gather (partly because most authorities don’t like to advertise criminal success), so I couldn’t get enough solid data to quote a fact except for a single year’s data for the UK, where only about one out of every million pounds were transferred fraudulently.

The next thought that jumped to mind, that wasn’t clear from the question, is, initially, “who approached whom”?

If your family found this villa advertised somewhere, or perhaps heard of it through word-of-mouth, that’s a lot less likely to be a scam, compared to if they received a “random nighttime phone call from a stranger” offering them “the deal of the century”.

I checked out the links you included and (in my limited experience) the palce seemed as legitimate as any other (although it’s silly that Google allows a sole review to be the owner), but then I had an idea to confirm.

Unfortunately you didn’t specify the date range that your family booked, because I was hoping to contact the villa before writing this post, and try to book the villa during the same period that your family has it booked!

I’d say that if he turned me away, that’s a pretty good indicator that there’s is no fraudulent activity. I can’t imagine a fraudster replying with, “I’m sorry, we’re already scamming someone during that time frame.”

Keep in mind, your question here has been viewed 4000 times in 14 hours, and there’s still a lot more time before the date of travel, so this post is likely rising towards up the list of Google Search results for the villa!

This could result in a number of things:

• Maybe the owner will angry that you doubted his honour _(unlikely)

• Maybe it is a scam and villains are packing their bags right now (or the legitimate owners are already in contact with authorities!) _(unlikely)

• Maybe everyone’s going to have a good laugh about it one day _(likely), and, hopefully: 🙂

• The owner could use this to his benefit, capitalizing on all of the free advertising & chatter you’ve generated, perhaps even with an unofficial certification…

According to the wayback machine, the contact number for this site in 2013 was +48 666 111 001 which is the same as it is today. They were also renting out the place in 2013 and have the same photos. If you call that number and get to speak to someone who you can confirm is the same person the booking was made with, I’d be pretty confident it’s not a scam. To do so would have to be quite a sophisticated operation taking over both the site and phone number.

At least the most telltale warning signs are missing.

First, it contains Polish, German and English which is to be expected because
Germans are one of the main tourists (and Masuria is really beautiful). The German is very good and I can say from experience that scammers have severe problems with it.

The address seems also to be correct, the Hotel Europa has the Aleja Wojska Polskiego 37 which fits.

The phone number is a typical Polish mobile phone number.

Last there is a snapshot of the area from the port:

And yes, it looks exactly like the photos from the website.

So currently I do not see any reason that it is a scam.

It is VERY popular in Poland that you book accommodation directly with the landlord via email or a phone. Most of so called “private accommodation” (kwatery prywatne) are not listed on booking.com or airbnb, because prices in Poland are still quite low and the fees would increase it. The website looks legitimate, so I’d say there’s no big risk.

On the other hand, from my experience, you usually don’t pay full price in advance, but rather something around 20-30%, and you pay the rest upon arrival.