VPD warns of ticket scams ahead of Taylor Swift concerts

Swifties beware: Vancouver police are warning the public against falling for scammers ahead of the looming Eras Tour.

The VPD says those looking for tickets should keep an eye out for risky transfers.

“Ticketmaster only allows transfers 72 hours before the concert, so think twice before sending money and waiting on a response,” it said.

“Use verified ticketing platforms or trusted resellers. Don’t fall for All Too Well stories about ‘a friend of a friend’ with extra tickets.”

‘It’s not worth it’: Swifties desperate for tickets being defrauded by online scammers

Prior to the Toronto concerts, a woman from that city told CityNews she unwittingly became the victim of an online scammer who she feels was 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, an 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.

Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour is coming to BC Place Dec. 6, 7, and 8.