Action Fraud warn of mistakes that could cost people thousands of pounds this summer
All incidents should be reported to Wiltshire Police or Action Fraud
People in Swindon and Wiltshire are being urged to “be careful when buying tickets for events this summer.
According to Action Fraud, Wiltshire residents lost more than £100,000 to ticket selling scams in 2024.
Across the UK, the figures reached £9.7m lost to ticket fraud.
Superintendent Amanda Wolf, head of the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau, said: “It's a pretty typical trend that we've seen rise over the last couple of years. It's increased by about 11% from last year to this and similar, if not a little bit more, in the preceding year.
“So, I think there were about nearly 10,000 ticket fraud reports last year and 8,500 the year before.
“And that is probably a conservative estimation because largely we can probably consider that some of these go under-reported as well.”
The highest numbers of ticket fraud reports were recorded last June and July as more festivals and concerts happen over the summer and many people tend to book plane tickets for their summer holidays.
However, many people do not report scams to their local police authority or Action Fraud.
Ms. Wolf told Greatest Hits Radio, there are “a number of reasons” for this.
“There's a lot of stigma attached to fraud and scam. People are embarrassed a lot of the time. When you get tricked you can feel embarrassed – it doesn't matter what age you are, what area you're from, it makes people feel quite unsettled as well.
“They also might not know about Action Fraud, which is one of the reasons for raising awareness because even if people don't suffer a financial loss it's really important that they tell us about it because it helps us understand it more. And it helps us understand how it's happening and it helps us to get ahead of that to help stop it happening.
“One of the other reasons is that they stop at reporting it to a bank to get their money back or they stop at reporting it to a social media site as a fake account. And the last step really is us”, she stressed.
“So, first of all, try and get your money back, try and get the site taken down. But tell us about it because if you can't get it taken down, we can. We can disrupt those sites and it's a method of us being able to prevent it from happening and prevent further victims.”
The safest way to purchase tickets is only buying them at the venue’s box office, through official promoters or on verified websites.
Action Fraud also advise people to pay by using a credit card instead of via bank transfer.
When buying tickets online, they recommend creating a new password that is entirely unrelated to all other passwords.
A new password should be made up of three random words to increase the password’s strength and memorability and, if available, two-step verification (2SV) should be enabled.
Other ways to keep safe are checking if the vendor is a member of the Society of Ticket Agents and Retailers (STAR) as well as being cautious of deals that seem too good to be true – because they usually are.
“Most people know what a phishing e-mail is now, so it lands in your inbox and entices you to come and look and buy these fantastic tickets. You click on the link and you end up on the website and then you purchase your tickets and it steals your information either personally or financially or it will divert you to somewhere malicious and potentially infect your computer with malware which then enables them to commit other types of fraud.
“A really easy way to entice people is to send something glitzy to their inbox and tickets for your favourite band will always get people clicking because it's a really good opportunity to do something fun”, added explained Ms. Wolf.
“So, just look out for those e-mail messages that don't look quite right or the address doesn't match up. Just take a second to look before you click on the link.”
Any suspicious emails can be reported to Action Fraud by sending an email to report@phishing.gov.uk.