With festival season well underway and a host of gigs taking place across Ireland in the next few weeks, many people will be scouring the internet for last minute tickets to sold out shows.
However, in among all the fun, fraudsters are provided with plenty of opportunities to take advantage of hopeful event attendees.
Actress and comedian Joanne McNally recently revealed online that she was scammed out of thousands of pounds while trying to get her hands on Glastonbury tickets – so how can you protect yourself from ending up in a similar situation?
Financial crime lead with FraudSMART Mary D’Arcy told Lunchtime Live that it’s not just individual sellers buyers should be wary of.
“There’s three [types of scams] that we’ve seen, the first one is fake ticket websites,” she said.
“So, this is one that’s more prevalent compared to the other two, and what happens is fraudsters are making the actual website look professional.
“They’ll mimic legitimate ticket sellers; the layout will be the same, logos look indistinguishable from the norm, and they’ll use bots and they’ll use fake reviews.
“This will all unharness them to make unfortunate victims believe it’s a genuine site.”
A young woman makes an online payment for a purchase.In order to avoid these scams, Ms D’Arcy recommended ticket-purchasers stick to official venue or promoter platforms, and use scamchecker.ie to check the legitimacy of websites.
She also warned that social media can be a hotbed for these scams to take place.
“What [fraudsters will] do is they’ll go on online platforms, sell counterfeit or non-existent tickets – so they’re luring the buyers with these attractive prices,” she said.
“These unbelievable, as we say, ‘too-good-to-be-true' prices.
“Once the payment is made – and it’s usually a bank transfer, so again, that’s a red flag here at FraudSMART.
“Do not make a payment through bank transfer, always use your credit and debit card.”
According to Ms D’Arcy, it is also best to avoid making these types of purchases on public wifi, as “anyone can gain access to public wifi”.
Main image: Woman crowd surfing at music festival. Image: Tony Tallec / Alamy. 2012
