SINGAPORE (The Straits Times/ANN): At least 2,000 victims fell prey to concert ticket scams between January and May, with losses amounting to at least S$1mil (RM3.5mil).
Most of these cases involved concert tickets to Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, said the police in response to queries on the concert ticket scam situation in the city-state.
They included reports lodged by victims who were scammed while trying to get tickets to watch Bruno Mars, Ed Sheeran and Coldplay in 2024.
The police said they have been working closely with social media and e-commerce platforms to take down scam advertisements for concert tickets and accounts involved in such scams once they are detected.
This included online marketplace Carousell suspending the sale of tickets to Swift’s concerts on its platform between Feb 23 and March 9 to prevent users from being scammed.
Carousell’s chief of staff Tan Su Lin had said in March that in the rush for tickets, users were not catching on to warning signs, such as sellers’ ratings that show if other buyers had found them to be reliable.
On Swift concert ticket scams, Assistant Commissioner of Police Aileen Yap told ST in March that reports lodged included those from victims who had bought tickets from resellers. They later discovered their tickets were fake when they could not enter the National Stadium, where the concerts were held.
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She said within the first few days of the American pop star arriving in Singapore in March to perform six sold-out shows, the number of reports relating to concert ticket scams spiked.
She warned that the issue of concert ticket scams could escalate to public order concerns, especially when fans who fly to Singapore to watch a concert could not enter the venue because of invalid tickets.
Between Jan 1 and March 12, at least 1,551 victims had fallen prey to e-commerce scams involving concert tickets, with total losses amounting to at least $737,000, said the police.
This figure has risen to over $1 million as at May, as more acts announced their upcoming shows here.
They include American singer-songwriter Olivia Rodrigo, who will be playing her Guts world tour over two nights in October. Tickets to both shows have sold out.
Icelandic jazz-pop singer Laufey, American singer Conan Gray and Canadian singer-songwriter Tate McRae have also announced shows in Singapore in 2024.
With more concerts held in Singapore over the past year, e-commerce scams, which concert ticket scams fall under, had more than doubled in 2023 to 9,783 cases, up from around 4,700 in 2022.
Victims lost at least $13.9 million in 2023, down from $21.3 million in 2022.
In March, a woman was charged with cheating after she allegedly offered Swift’s concert tickets for sale online but became uncontactable after getting paid.
According to court documents, Foo Mei Qi, 29, allegedly duped a woman into transferring $350 in September 2023.
In May, a teenager admitted to cheating three victims of $1,540 by claiming he was selling Eras Tour tickets.
One of the victims was an 18-year-old girl, who received fake concert tickets, which she later presented at the National Stadium. She was denied entry after a machine there indicated her four tickets were fake.
The teen, who cannot be named as he was 17 years old when he committed the offences, will be sentenced in July. - The Straits Times/ANN
