The clamour to safe tickets for Taylor Swift’s sold-out UK exhibits is anticipated to gasoline a summer time fraud bonanza as figures confirmed a “staggering” £1.2bn was stolen from unwitting shoppers in 2023.
Swift’s Eras tour, which arrives within the UK in June, and the Olympic Video games, are contenders for greatest ticketing rip-off of the 12 months. The warning, from trade group UK Finance, got here as its annual fraud report revealed that the variety of individuals succumbing to a “buy rip-off” in 2023 soared.
In any such fraud, the sufferer pays upfront for items or companies – equivalent to live performance tickets or designer garments – which might be by no means acquired. They often contain public sale web sites or pretend adverts on social media.
Ben Donaldson, UK Finance’s managing director of financial crime, stated buy scams tended to be pegged to large occasions within the calendar, so Taylor Swift is “going to be a danger this 12 months”.
“We see a cycle of scams altering all year long … the Olympics and Taylor Swift are in all probability the 2 greatest ones for this 12 months,” he stated.
Final month, Lloyds Financial institution issued an “pressing warning” about Taylor Swift tickets after greater than 600 of its prospects have been scammed, dropping greater than £1m.
Donaldson’s feedback got here because the banking and finance trade commerce physique’s report revealed criminals stole a complete of £1.2bn by way of fee fraud and scams final 12 months. The massive tally was nonetheless down by 4% on 2022 as tighter financial institution safety controls and higher public consciousness of the methods deployed by fraudsters made a small dent.
“It’s actually constructive that monetary losses are down … however the quantities which might be being stolen are nonetheless completely staggering,” he stated.
Of the £1.2bn, roughly 60% is unauthorised transactions on fee playing cards and on-line banking. Victims of any such fraud practically all the time get their a refund.
The remainder, £460m, is authorised push fee (APP) fraud. That is the place somebody is tricked into transferring cash to a fraudster.
Final 12 months, the variety of instances of APP fraud jumped by 12% to 232,429, with buy scams accounting for roughly two-thirds of this determine.
The element confirmed the variety of buy rip-off instances surging by 34% to 156,516, with scammers making off with a complete of £86m. This was the best on each counts since UK Finance began monitoring APP fraud scams in 2020.
A complete of £287m was returned to APP fraud victims in 2023 which equates to 62% of the full loss. This was up from 59% in 2022.
One of many different downside areas highlighted within the report was romance fraud – the place victims are tricked into believing they’re in a relationship. Right here, the variety of scams additionally reached new highs by way of losses and instances, which have been up by 17% to £37m and 14%, respectively.
Card id theft additionally elevated once more in 2023, with losses up by 53% to £79m. That is when criminals, unable to influence victims into making authorised push funds, use the non-public info gathered in addition to stolen card particulars to both take over accounts or apply for brand new bank cards.
The replace comes earlier than new guidelines in October, that make reimbursement for APP scams necessary. At current, many banks have signed as much as a voluntary reimbursement code.
Matt Hepburn, TSB’s fraud spokesperson, stated that with greater than three-quarters of fraud instances beginning on-line, it was time that social media platforms, “stepped up with measures to urgently halt the fraud epidemic they presently allow”.
