Hinton RCMP are investigating a credit card scam involving a free vacation contest booth set up at the Wild Mountain Music Festival over the July 26 weekend.

“Police have received several complaints where ‘winners’ are contacted and told they have to pay only the taxes for their vacation. The ‘winners’ are asked for their credit card to pay the taxes,” states the RCMP press release.

The taxes on the holiday have meant that some people have lost over $600.

“To date, none of the ‘winners’ have received any supporting documentation of their vacation,” states the release.

Layne Seabrook, director for the Wild Mountain Music Festival, said he saw one woman operating the fake vacation booth. He described her as 40-ish, brunette, average build and about 5’3” - 5’5”.

“She was really just fairly average looking,” he said.

Seabrook said that the papers the festival received for the booth’s registration at the event originally stated they were from Peru and would be selling art and carpets. The foreign origin made verifying the booth a little tricky, said Seabrook. He said normally, someone should check out the booth’s registration papers. This means calling up the booth’s home office, checking to see if they have a website and several other steps to make sure the business is legit. When the business is from Peru, tracking down those details can be hard, said Seabrook.

Seabrook said that a booth with something like a Peruvian origin is usually an indicator that a scam may be in the works, but he said that the person in charge of checking out the booths was fairly new to the job. The person simply didn’t know what red flags to look for.

“Noticing sketchy information on the application form is really how you catch these guys in the first place,” said Seabrook.

He also said no one noticed when the Peruvian art dealers turned out to be contest vacation ticket sellers. The booth simply didn’t stand out alongside the 12 other vendors.

“Lots of lessons learned here. We’ll be educating our coordinators about just how to check these booths out,” said Seabrook.

Hinton RCMP are continuing to investigate the scam and are requesting that the public use caution when providing personal or credit information.

If anyone has information regarding this or any other incident, please contact the Hinton RCMP at 780-865-2455 or call Crimestoppers at 1-800-422-8477.