‘It’s not worth it’: Toronto Swifties desperate for tickets being defrauded by online scammers
Posted November 13, 2024 3:59 pm.
It’s the hottest ticket in town and whether you’re ready for it or not, the city is abuzz with Swiftie spirit as fans gear up for the long awaited Toronto stop of the pop megastar’s Eras Tour.
For the fortunate few who managed to get their hands on tickets, the excitement has been ramping up for weeks. For those who didn’t and are still trying, the desperation is building, which could lead to some careless decisions.
A Toronto woman tells CityNews she unwittingly became the victim of an online scammer who she feels is preying on the eagerness and vulnerability of fans keen to see their idol on stage.
“I was just so excited at the prospect of going and the [cheap] cost and [given] just how difficult it was to get tickets, in hindsight, we really overlooked a lot of small details that should have made us realize it was a scam,” said Natalie Benacem.
She had been scouring TikTok for tips on how to score tickets for weeks.
“In the comments section there’s tons of people writing comments saying ‘I’m selling tickets, reach out to me’,” she said.
She and a friend reached out to one such commenter who presented themselves as a teenage girl.
“Everything seemed to check out. She had a profile built with lots of pictures of her. Then we also moved communications over to Instagram and all the pictures lined up and it just seemed feasible. We actually had very lengthy conversations with her and it just felt genuine. She was very believable,” said Benacem.
“We thought she was a young, teenage girl. So for her safety, we understood she might not want to meet up in person. She showed us screenshots of tickets and we agreed per her preference that we would send the payment to PayPal as opposed to e-transfer. [We paid] for the first ticket and then she sent us the first ticket. Then I had sent the PayPal for the second ticket, and we never got a second ticket. She basically blocked us and there was no way to reach out to her anymore.”
Benacem and her friend paid $600 for two tickets and received sweet nothing in return. Instead they were left with just one to split between the two of them.
“It was only $300, so that should have set off a red flag. But $300 in this economy is hard … but it was too much of a good situation and so we kind of fell for it. We got really excited and we missed all the red flags,” she said.
They felt there was no fair way to decide who would go for the show and instead of risking any bad blood, they ended up reselling the one ticket they received from the scammer.
“We were really upset. Some expletives were said … but it gives the opportunity for somebody else to enjoy it,” she said.
How to protect yourself from a Swiftie scam
In a Zoom interview, Daniel Tsai, adjunct professor specializing in business law and technology at the University of Toronto said Benacem fell victim to one of the most common online scams.
“Usually what we see is the use of Kijiji and other open marketplaces, where you’re not able to identify or verify the identity of the other parties — that’s where people can pretend to be somebody else. They don’t even have to be in the same city. They could be in a foreign country,” he explained.
“Inevitably they always ask for some kind of Bitcoin or e-transfer, which makes it effectively impossible to get your money back once you transfer it out.”
He cautions against buying tickets from unknown sellers online.
“You shouldn’t be buying tickets online from anyone that you don’t know and you haven’t actually spoken to or seen in person to discuss the purchase. It’s just not worth it.” he said.
He says even a video call is not proof enough anymore and could be a very convincing hoax.
“The deep fakes have gotten so good with AI that you can have a zoom call like this … and the person is speaking, it looks like they have naturalistic realistic movements. You wouldn’t be able to tell if that’s a virtual avatar created by AI. That actually happened in a banking scam in Hong Kong where the bank was defrauded out of tens of millions of dollars,” he said.
All a bad actor needs is a free app and a sample of someone’s voice and image from their social media to pull off such a scam.
“And unfortunately, the software developers of these apps haven’t put in protections or protocols to prevent that type of misuse and fraud from occurring,” he said.
Another common fraud technique he says to watch out for involves hacked social media accounts of friends and family.
“So you believe you know this person from Facebook or some other social media, you’re connected, you’re in the same network, so you have no reason to doubt that that is the person that you know. And you purchase the tickets finding out later it’s all fake and that that person’s account was hacked, and in fact, you were dealing with somebody else and not with that person. That has actually become quite common, especially with the Taylor Swift tickets,” he said.
Benacem shared that she almost fell for that exact Facebook scam soon after her experience with the TikTok fraudster.
“My first cousin had posted that she had tickets and she wasn’t able to make it to the show. And I [felt] well at least this is somebody that I know and I trust. So I messaged her and there was some back and forth about where the seats are and the price and ‘why can’t you go?'” she explained.
“They sent me a screen recording of the tickets. So again, I felt like it was a secure transaction.”
When it came time for payment, the person Benacem was talking to said the e-transfer should be sent to their partner’s email address.
“They gave me the email and because I thought I was communicating with my cousin, I know her name, I know her partner’s name, and it just gave me a little prickle. It didn’t feel right. So I went on her Instagram and she had posted a story that someone had hacked her Facebook and she’s not selling tickets. So luckily at that point I hadn’t sent any money and crisis averted,” she said.
After the narrow escape, Benacem says she rewatched the screen recording and during the last few seconds, she noticed the service provider on the top left of the screen was exposed and read “Nigeria LTE” – a detail she says is easy to overlook when you’re so eager to find tickets, even if you’re keeping your eyes open for clues.
“She was selling them for $500 each, and I was going to take at least a pair, so I would’ve lost $1,000,” she said, relieved that she wasn’t the foolish one this time.
Tsai says low prices are a common scam tactic and should always give you pause.
“These tickets that you see going for face value or a little more than that, those aren’t legit tickets because the marketplace for these tickets is so expensive. You know that someone could sell that for a profit. Why would they sell it to a stranger for $300 or $400? It’s just not happening. We’re seeing ticket prices on StubHub for $3,000 to $4,000 on the reselling market,” he said.
Tsai adds that when it comes to payment, the safest online method is via credit card.
“Because if there is an issue with the vendor on the other side, you can complain to the credit card company, your bank to get the charges reversed. That’s your only protection when it comes to purchasing services or goods and not actually receiving them. So if you can’t do that, don’t even bother. If you really think about it, these e-transfers and PayPal and these other intermediary payment systems is the equivalent of you pulling money that you worked really hard for out of your wallet and handing it over with no guarantee you’ll get anything in return. That’s the dumbest investment you could ever make,” he said.
“If you’re going to do it, make sure the other person has the the item and can actually give it to you. And that means you deal with legitimate sources and you avoid Facebook marketplace, you avoid Kijiji, and you try to make sure you deal with the people that you actually know and you can verify. You call, you speak to them and you see them in person. Or you stick to legitimate sites that are verified like StubHub and get the tickets that way. Or you sit it out because it may just not be worth getting scammed.”
He adds that it is also important to be careful when trying to purchase from legitimate sites. Instead of using Google search, he suggests typing in the actual address to ensure you reach the right website.
“Some of those links and banners you see on Google search could be fake and Google doesn’t do a great job of preventing those things from showing up on their web search. So that’s a huge public disservice and something that allows innocent people and kids to get scammed,” he said.
“We saw this happen with Amazon Prime Days where a lot of sites looked like they were Amazon ads and they weren’t, they were just scam sites.”
Several police forces across the GTA are also warning people about an uptick in ticket scams.
“If you’re looking to buy tickets leading up to the shows or on the nights of – buy from authorized sellers that you can trust. Avoid ticket purchases from social media sites. And if you find a ticket being sold at a low price, be wary,” said the Toronto Police in a statement to CityNews.
Barrie Police also posted a warning on X with the same message.
“The Barrie Police Service Fraud Unit is reminding people who are still looking for tickets for the upcoming Taylor Swift concerts to only make purchases from verified sources, don’t send money to people you do not know and remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it likely is!” read the post.
Peel Police went a step further, posting a video warning sprinkled with Swift’s song titles and lyrics.
“When you see these posts, I know how exciting it can be but ‘you need to calm down,'” says Cst. Bell-Morena in the video.
For Benacem, it was a hard lesson to learn, especially since she considers herself fairly savvy with online transactions.
“I have a little bit of a side business and I sell products online. So I’m very familiar with PayPal and e-transfer and the rules for each platform. But scammers are very smart and they’re finding new tricks every day to prey on people’s vulnerability,” she said
“[Taylor Swift] has a huge fandom and a lot of people are younger … and having gone through it one and a half times as as an adult, I can only imagine the amount of younger people [and parents] that are getting scammed as well.”
Despite the harrowing experiences, Benacem said she was able to shake it off and tried to get tickets a third time. This attempt was through what she believes to be a legitimate Ticketmaster link sent to those who signed up as verified fans when new rows of tickets were released recently.
All’s well that ends well as she’s managed to secure tickets for her and a friend and even though she sees them in her account and has proof of her purchase, she’s still a little skittish.
“I’ll believe it when I’m there,” she said.
