LITTLE CANADA, Minn. - Before the Super Bowl came to Minnesota, Erik Gorsuch turned to HomeAway.com in hopes of making some extra money.
Months later, that listing led to a nightmare that he is still trying to recover from.
"It's going to be an issue for years and years to come," Gorsuch said.
Though he didn't book any reservations during the Super Bowl, on Aug. 10, he was surprised to receive a message from someone looking to rent his 5,500 square feet home for his Super Bowl asking price of $2,500 per night.
"He said he was coming with his son and his wife and visiting his in-laws the next night," Gorsuch said.
Even after he exchanged messages with the prospective renter Gorsuch says he was skeptical. But he visited his own HomeAway account and saw the rental agreement was accepted and a payment appeared to be on the way. Then he picked up the phone.
"I called Homeaway, asked them if the booking was legitimate, if they had collected the funds," Gorsuch said. "They said, yes, it was legitimate, they had the funds, they were on the way to my account."
But after cleaning up his home and turning over the keys, he returned two days later to find his life, and nearly all his possessions, turned upside down.
"Everything, everything had been gone through," he said.
Gorsuch documented damage and stolen items from every room and says he's out $10-12,000.
"The real damage, quite frankly, was the personal information that they took," he said. "Just bringing those people into my neighborhood, quite frankly, scares the crap out of me."
Gorsuch says the suspects got away because they used someone else's personal information and stolen credit card to book his home, but when he reported the damage to HomeAway, he was initially told he wouldn't be seeing any money.
"Not a dollar," he said.
The company pointed to an email sent by HomeAway Payments hours before check-in, alerting him that the payment was unauthorized and wouldn't be processed.
Erik says he didn't see that email, and he says HomeAway customer service apparently didn't see it either.
"For the entire following week they were saying, 'No, it's still good, the money was on its way to my account," Gorsuch said.
Several days after KARE 11 asked HomeAway about the discrepancy, a company spokesperson responded with the following statement:
"Our system notified the homeowner about the fraudulent activity and blocked the criminal’s IP address and blacklisted his account. Unfortunately, the criminal was able to trick this homeowner into allowing him into his home despite the fraud alert. As an act of goodwill, we will reimburse the homeowner for the rental amount he would have received had this been a legitimate booking because the HomeAway customer service team didn’t flag the alert in a later phone conversation."
Gorsuch says he was surprised to hear HomeAway suddenly change course several weeks after his initial complaint. He says the company offered $6,600 to cover the total cost of the original booking, but he's not sure what to make of it.
"The only reason they're responding is because they don't want the bad press, in my opinion," he said "They say it's an act of good will that they're reimbursing the expenses, but they're not reimbursing what was lost. They're reimbursing what I should have had from the start."
Gorsuch says he's exploring his legal options, and also wants to ensure the same problem doesn't happen to anyone else.
A HomeAway spokesperson insists this case was unique and that fraud cases are "
closer to zero than one percent of all bookings."
Despite how rare fraud and damage may be, the company says homeowners using the site should be wary of last minute bookings. The company also suggests requesting an ID at check-in in order to verify the identity of the renter. Finally, they recommend having vacation rental insurance included on your home policy.