i think my first year i got excited thinking i had a reservation for a week. we did get folks from china, italy, finland, russia to name a few and sometimes the english was confusing, so i wasn't sure. ran the card for the entire stay at time of reservation as requested. no red flags. then about 2 days later received an email that they had to cancel and to please refund. but to please
send the money and not reverse the credit card charge because they needed the money back and it would take too long if it was tied up in their credit card account. uh oh. called my bank and they helped me reverse the charge as it was big and i was new to this.
the card apparently
did belong to the person charging, but they were charging all over the place in the united states and then requesting cash refunds ... trying to get the refunds before the charges fell through. another day or so and my bank account linked with the charges would have had that payment deducted since it exceeded their limit. if i'd fallen for it, sent them a check and they'd cashed it, i'd have been out about $1250.00 i was hurt and angry because i got these pathetic emails about how they needed the money back and it was linked to their bank account ... and i felt bad. the email account was closed shortly thereafter.
as it was, i think it cost me a bank fee but no more.
as i said, sometimes i did actually get guests from far away and it all was totally legitimate. but NO cash refunds. if they paid by cc, they got a cc reverse charge.
as for those looking for work, yes ... i got inquiries from people trying to secure a summer job on a work visa but i was told i had to provide housing and i was not set up to do that. i don't know if that is true or if i was misinformed. the bigger places in the area always had/have foreign summer help. the only scam i encountered (if you can call it that) was a lovely girl from Georgia (Russia) who quickly switched from wanting a job to wanting to date my son the minute she spotted him. yikers!.