Swiss crime (yes, crime!)

To be fair, it sounds like these particular criminals may be UK-/Canada-affiliated, but still! As we prepare for Swiss Mister's family to arrive for a ski visit next month, we can only hope we will not be sleeping in a pile of snow.

From Simon Bradley at Swissinfo.ch:

“Ghost” chalet scam targets rich Verbier skiers
A stunning luxury six-bed holiday home for rent in the heart of Verbier. The catch? The SFr12,300 ($11,400)-a-week house, Chalet Lumière, does not actually exist.

This was the bad news that greeted the tourist victims of a recent internet letting scam in the popular Swiss ski resort. Police warn visitors to check carefully when booking via the net but say little can be done to prevent such incidents.

“The site was very well done, very professional with pictures of a chalet and lots of information,” Valais cantonal police spokesman Vincent Favre told swissinfo.ch. “It’s easy to see why people were conned.”




According to the police and the Verbier tourist office, several groups of foreign tourists have fallen victim to the rental scam on the site “skichalet-verbier.com which was eventually shut down last weekend.



Local tourist officials got wind of the ruse late last year when a tour operator tipped them off about the mysterious holiday home. Things began to snowball after concerned holidaymakers who had paid deposits started ringing the tourist office with questions about the chalet.



Then in mid-December a British couple arrived in the mountain resort with their skis and luggage only to discover that the spectacular Chalet Lumière, which they had booked and fully paid for by internet, was just a pile of snow.



The unfortunate British pair was later put up in a hotel by the tourist office, which persuaded them to lodge a formal complaint against the site with the British and Swiss police.

Read the full story here.