Nationwide ticket scam traced to Alicante

AN INVESTIGATION into over 100 reports of fake tickets being sold online for music events around the country has led to three arrests in Alicante, reported the National Police.

The suspects, who are related to each other, are accused of forging tickets for concerts by major artists and festivals, and of opening bank accounts to receive the money from these frauds.

The tickets, which cost between €15 and €60, simulated the security measures on the real ones and included bar codes and QR codes, although the victims would not realise these did not work until they were refused entry at the venues.

The victim whose complaint that launched the investigation claimed to have been defrauded when they bought some tickets to see a wellknown musician in Madrid.

Officers found this was not an isolated event and the people behind the fraud must have been operating for over a year.

Just the National Police compiled more than 100 complaints from people who had been conned buying tickets for countless concerts, festivals, musicals and other events all over the country, but evidence indicates that many more people were affected but did not bother to report it because they had not lost a great deal of money.

The victims were contacted by using various social engineering techniques, such as adverts on social networks and second-hand websites, and directly contacting people on these platforms who were looking for certain tickets.

Once they had agreed a price, which was usually relatively low, the fraudsters forged the tickets using typical templates used for these sorts of events, inserting images of the artists in question and simulating the security measures.

The suspects made their living from this activity and closely followed the tour schedules of the principal artists performing in Spain.

The large number of victims and widespread nature of the crimes required the involvement of the public prosecution office for computer crimes to bring the case before a single court.

This enabled it to be demonstrated that the complaints were not isolated and independent cases but a criminal activity carried out by the same gang.

At the moment of their arrests in Alicante, the suspects were in the process of contacting new victims to sell them fake tickets for concerts.

A search of their home seized eight hard drives, two mobile phones, 18 SIM cards, 11 credit cards, three USB sticks and two laptop computers.

Furthermore, 11 bank accounts that were used to receive the payments from the frauds have been frozen.