The clamour to secure tickets for Taylor Swift’s sold-out UK shows is expected to fuel a summer fraud bonanza as figures showed a “staggering” £1.2bn was stolen from unwitting consumers in 2023.
Swift’s Eras tour, which arrives in the UK in June, and the Olympic Games, are contenders for biggest ticketing scam of the year. The warning, from industry group UK Finance, came as its annual fraud report revealed that the number of people succumbing to a “purchase scam” in 2023 soared.
In this type of fraud, the victim pays in advance for goods or services – such as concert tickets or designer clothes – that are never received. They usually involve auction websites or fake adverts on social media.
Ben Donaldson, UK Finance’s managing director of economic crime, said purchase scams tended to be pegged to big events in the calendar, so Taylor Swift is “going to be a risk this year”.
“We see a cycle of scams changing throughout the year … the Olympics and Taylor Swift are probably the two biggest ones for this year,” he said.
Last month, Lloyds Bank issued an “urgent warning” about Taylor Swift tickets after more than 600 of its customers were scammed, losing more than £1m.
Donaldson’s comments came as the banking and finance industry trade body’s report revealed criminals stole a total of £1.2bn through payment fraud and scams last year. The huge tally was nonetheless down by 4% on 2022 as tighter bank security controls and greater public awareness of the tricks deployed by fraudsters made a small dent.
“It is really positive that financial losses are down … but the amounts that are being stolen are still absolutely staggering,” he said.
Of the £1.2bn, roughly 60% is unauthorised transactions on payment cards and online banking. Victims of this type of fraud nearly always get their money back.
The rest, £460m, is authorised push payment (APP) fraud. This is where someone is tricked into transferring money to a fraudster.
Last year, the number of cases of APP fraud jumped by 12% to 232,429, with purchase scams accounting for roughly two-thirds of this figure.
The detail showed the number of purchase scam cases surging by 34% to 156,516, with scammers making off with a total of £86m. This was the highest on both counts since UK Finance started tracking APP fraud scams in 2020.
A total of £287m was returned to APP fraud victims in 2023 which equates to 62% of the total loss. This was up from 59% in 2022.
One of the other problem areas highlighted in the report was romance fraud – where victims are tricked into believing they are in a relationship. Here, the number of scams also reached new highs in terms of losses and cases, which were up by 17% to £37m and 14%, respectively.
Card identity theft also increased again in 2023, with losses up by 53% to £79m. This is when criminals, unable to persuade victims into making authorised push payments, use the personal information gathered as well as stolen card details to either take over accounts or apply for new credit cards.
The update comes before new rules in October, that make reimbursement for APP scams mandatory. At present, many banks have signed up to a voluntary reimbursement code.
Matt Hepburn, TSB’s fraud spokesperson, said that with more than three-quarters of fraud cases starting online, it was time that social media platforms, “stepped up with measures to urgently halt the fraud epidemic they currently enable”.