Fake Olympics and Taylor Swift tickets are the two biggest online scams consumers are likely to encounter this year, UK Finance has warned.
The alert came as the banking lobby group reported that the number of people tricked by romance fraud and purchase scams jumped to new highs last year. Overall, criminals stole £1.17bn in 2023, down 4% from 2022, according to the group’s annual report on fraud.
But UK Finance said the abuse of online platforms continued to leave people vulnerable. It called on tech companies to do more to help stop the scams. Consumers lost £86m last year to purchase scams, in which they agreed to pay for something that never materialised, UK Finance said.
That was up 28% from 2022. In total, there were more than 156,000 cases of such fraud last year.
“Every year we see a cycle of scams changing throughout the year,” said Ben Donaldson, the managing director of economic crime at UK Finance.
“Olympics and Taylor Swift are the two biggest examples of this year.” In April, Lloyds Bank revealed that Swift’s fans had lost a total of £1m in scam ticket sales ahead of the UK leg of her tour, which starts in July.
