NAB blocks $285,000 in ticket scams over three months

As Taylor Swift prepares to leave behind the Chief’s Superbowl victory and fly into Australia there’s a strong warning from the NAB to be careful where you buy your tickets from.

Scammers and Scalpers are rampant and most of them are quite simply not legitimate tickets being offered for sale.

The simple demand for tickets is what’s driving the scams, cyber criminals are poised waiting to take advantage in these very situations. They are hacking Facebook accounts to appear as legitimate people with tickets to sell, and while we may never know how many people have been dudded it’s going to be a lot.

One of Australia’s big-four banks the NAB has revealed their customers have abandoned $285,000 in payments linked to potential ticket scams in just the last three months.

These abandoned payments come after a warning – introduced last year – within the NAB app or Internet Banking that shows if a payment is out of character or shows signs it could be a scam.

NAB Security Awareness Manager Laura Hartley had simple advice for those looking online for tickets, saying “Tickets for sold out concerts being listed on social media marketplaces or posts in fan groups are the biggest red flag of a scam,”

“Only buy tickets from the authorised reseller. 

“We’re hearing about criminals hacking social media profiles and selling bogus concert tickets to the account owner’s friends, who aren’t aware someone else is controlling the account.

“Even if it’s a friend you legitimately know listing the tickets on social media, pick up the phone and talk to them directly before sending money.”

The most important advice in these situations is to slow down, take a breath. If you’ve come across an available Tay Tay ticket then before jumping into the money transfer, second guess everything about it.

In reality, the only authorised marketplace for tickets is the Ticketek marketplace where real ticket holders can sell unwanted tickets. Critically, they cannot be sold for more than 10% of the original ticket price.

Additionally, those tickets will be sent via the Ticketek app.

If you’ve been sent a ticket you bought from someone on social media – check it. If it has a barcode to scan at the gate, it’s not real. Those barcodes are not being issued until the day of or before the events, so sadly, while this may look legitimate – it’s a fake ticket:

It’s pleasing to know that so many people abandoned their purchases, saving those hundreds of thousands of dollars – and those are just NAB customers. What worries me most are the hundreds, maybe thousands of people who think they have legitimate tickets and will turn up to the turnstiles for the concert only to be rejected – finding out right there, at the last minute, possibly with young devastated children with them – that they do not in fact have legitimate tickets.

So check now folks, use the Ticketek app – check if you really do have a Taylor Swift ticket in the app.