Taylor Swift fans have been hit especially hard by ticketing scams because of the sheer scale of demand to see her concerts in Toronto.Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters
They saved up thousands of dollars, spent hours in Ticketmaster queues (to no avail) and in some cases travelled across the country or from the United States – all to see Taylor Swift on the last leg of her Eras tour in Toronto. Now, it turns out hundreds of eager Swifties have individually lost between $2,000 and $16,000 to ticket scams last week alone.
Though Swift fans have been hit especially hard by ticketing scams because of the sheer scale of demand – the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre has received more than 200 reports this year alone related to the pop star’s shows – police across the Greater Toronto Area expect to see more scams for future high-demand events.
Here’s what you need to know to protect yourself.
How have scammers targeted Taylor Swift fans?
A host of concert ticket scams were reported to police forces across the GTA last weekend.
Several fans shared the same story with The Globe: Determined to make it to one of the pop star’s performances, they bought concert tickets from a Burlington, Ont., woman – in some cases, more than a year in advance.
The fans sent password-protected e-transfers to an e-mail address provided by the seller and were told the tickets wouldn’t be available until 48 hours before the concert. Most victims also talked to the woman, who lived in the same community, over the phone.
Shortly before the concert, the reseller told the fans her source for the block of tickets could not be reached anymore.
Though authorities say the exact details of the case are relatively unique, e-transfers are the primary payment method across concert ticket scams, according to Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre spokesperson Lisanne Roy Beauchamp. She said most complaints related to Swift shows involve victims solicited through compromised social accounts belonging to someone they know.
Halton Regional Police Service said it had received approximately 40 complaints of fraudulent or nonexistent tickets involving the same vendor as of Monday, with an estimated total value of $70,000 in lost funds.
A Toronto Police Service spokesperson said the force had 44 reports of fraudulent tickets as of Wednesday.
How do you identify a scam?
Online ticket scams are shapeshifting with the advent of new technologies and social media platforms, but there are some common red flags. One of the biggest is when an individual buyer tries to inflate urgency, said Toronto Police Detective David Coffey.
“That’s a classic salesman tactic, you know, ‘it’s going fast, there are lots of people who want this,’” he said. “They don’t want people to think about it, to listen to that little voice in their head.”
Ms. Beauchamp also said to watch out for sellers claiming to experience technical issues with exchanging money or tickets.
Often, scammers will impersonate someone the buyer knows and reach out from their e-mail address, so it’s important to try reaching out to that person on a different platform, said Det. Coffey.
In general, Det. Coffey encourages ticket buyers to purchase from primary sellers such as Ticketmaster and to avoid peer-to-peer marketplaces such as Facebook. By trying to save, you may risk losing more money. “I wouldn’t touch a ticket offer on any social media website with a 10-foot pole,” he said.
When someone does choose to go the latter route, he recommends meeting in a public place, ideally outside of a police station.
What should you do if you find out you’ve fallen prey to a scam?
The first step should be reporting the incident to local police. After that, your options will depend on the province you bought the tickets in, the province the event is held in, and the platform you purchased them on.
Consumer Protection Ontario, a provincial program promoting consumer rights and public safety, is your go-to for reporting complaints in that province. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre takes similar steps on a national level. Experts advise filing a complaint with both.
“Both of them have the power to investigate these claims and impose sanctions,” said Adil Abdulla, a lawyer at Sotos Class Actions in Toronto.
Though both organizations can investigate fraud occurring abroad and even sanction fraudsters who have assets in Ontario, these investigations are exceedingly hard. The most authorities can usually do is issue warnings or inform law enforcement in other jurisdictions.
If the ticket was purchased on a platform such as Ticketmaster or a resale platform such as StubHub, your next step is writing a demand letter, which is a formal document that attempts to resolve a dispute. It can be written by yourself or a lawyer. In this case, you would ask for compensation under the company’s reimbursement policies and their legal obligations under Ontario’s Ticket Sales Act.
If these avenues don’t lead anywhere and you want to escalate the complaint, the next option is to file a lawsuit in your provincial court. “Court fees are a couple of hundred to a couple thousand...so you’d want to have lost at least $10,000 before it makes sense to bring a claim in that court,” said Mr. Abdulla.
What protections do ticket resellers offer?
All major ticket resale platforms, such as StubHub and SeatGeek, have some form of buyer guarantee.
There is a requirement in Ontario’s Ticket Sales Act that says sellers must provide a guarantee if the price is above the face value of the ticket, said Mr. Abdulla.
StubHub spokesperson Tara MacPherson said the platform takes “stringent measures” to penalize fraudulent activity, including fines up to double the ticket cost and permanent bans from the platform. She said sellers are disincentivized from selling invalid tickets on StubHub as they will not be paid unless the buyer successfully attends the event.
Ms. MacPherson also added that fraud on the platform is rare, with less than 0.2 per cent of orders in North America encountering issues at the door.
SeatGeek referred The Globe to their “Buyer Guarantee,” which states that if a ticket is not delivered or invalid, they will work with customers to resolve any verified issues and provide them with either “comparable or better tickets” to the event, a refund or a credit.
How do you recover the money?
Unfortunately, if the money was lost through a scam on social media or through an individual seller, “almost consider your money gone,” said Mr. Coffey. In these cases, typically the only way to get money back is by filing a lawsuit.
If you paid by credit card for a ticket you didn’t receive, you can sometimes receive reimbursement from the card provider. That depends on the terms and conditions of your individual card, though many may offer this.
“You can ask the bank to charge back on [the] credit card,” said Sylvie De Bellefeuille a spokesperson for Options Consommateurs, a non-profit advocating for consumer rights.
For those scammed through a primary seller or a broker platform reselling tickets, sending a demand letter can sometimes help you get back money.
“There is a plausible argument that you actually have a claim against the reselling platform, not just against a seller – so you’d probably want to write a demand letter to the platform asking for a refund or to comply with their statutory obligations,” said Mr. Abdulla.