Fake tickets for Taylor Swift's highly anticipated UK tour and the upcoming Olympic Games are expected to be the two biggest online scams consumers will face this year, according to a warning issued by UK Finance. The banking lobby group's alert comes as its annual fraud report revealed that the number of people falling victim to romance fraud and purchase scams reached record highs in 2023.
Overall, criminals stole £1.17bn from unsuspecting consumers last year, a 4% decrease from 2022. However, UK Finance emphasized that the abuse of online platforms continues to leave people vulnerable to scams and called on tech companies to do more to help combat this growing problem.
Purchase scams, in which consumers pay for goods or services that never materialize, accounted for a significant portion of the losses, with victims losing £86m in 2023, a 28% increase from the previous year. In total, there were more than 156,000 reported cases of such fraud last year.
Ben Donaldson, the managing director of economic crime at UK Finance, explained that scams tend to follow a cyclical pattern, with different types of fraud becoming more prevalent throughout the year. "Olympics and Taylor Swift are the two biggest examples of this year," he said.
In April, Lloyds Bank revealed that Swift's fans had already lost a total of £1m in scam ticket sales ahead of the UK leg of her tour, which begins in July. Over 600 of the bank's customers came forward to report losing money to fraudulent ticket sellers.
UK Finance warned that fraudsters often convince victims to pay for goods via bank transfer instead of through official sites. "Tickets for big events such as the Olympics, Euro 2024, Glastonbury or Taylor Swift sell out quickly and people often look online for better offers to avoid missing out. Criminals will use this as an opportunity to try and trick you into purchasing tickets that are either fraudulent or don't exist," cautioned Andy Donald from UK Finance.
Despite the slight decrease in overall fraud cases, which dropped 1% from 2022 to roughly 2.97 million, the fight against this pervasive crime remains a challenge. The report found that losses due to unauthorised transactions fell 3% to £708.7m last year, a drop attributed to improved customer verification practices. Additionally, there was a 5% decline in losses from scams involving authorised payments, totaling £459.7m, as cases involving criminals pretending to be a bank or police dropped sharply.
However, romance scams, in which people are tricked into believing they are in a relationship, hit a record high in 2023. Losses in these cases increased by 17% to £36m, with an average of 10 payments per case, double the amount reported for the same type of scams in 2020.
"The money stolen funds serious organised crime and victims often suffer emotional damage as fraud is a pernicious and manipulative crime," Donaldson stressed.
New regulations set to come into force on October 7, 2023, will require UK payment service providers to reimburse customers who fall victim to payment fraud, with some exceptions. UK Finance noted that this change adds urgency to the fight against fraud, with Donaldson warning, "With reimbursement rules set to change, we risk even more money getting into criminal hands, unless the technology and telecommunication sectors take [proper] action to stop the fraud that proliferates on their platforms and networks."
To help consumers protect themselves from ticket scams, UK Finance advises researching the company selling the tickets, purchasing only from official venues, promoters, or reputable ticket exchange sites, and being wary of unsolicited offers that seem too good to be true. They also recommend avoiding payment by bank transfer and opting for credit cards or payment services like PayPal, which offer better chances of recovering money in case of fraud.
