Concert ticket scam victims lost S$518,000 this year, more than past five-year total
VICTIMS of scams involving the sale of concert tickets have lost a total of S$518,000 since the start of this year, up until July 10, said Minister of State for Home Affairs Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim in Parliament on Wednesday (Aug 2).
This amount is more than 50 per cent higher than the total that was lost to such scams in the past five years combined, which were S$84,000 in 2018, S$66,000 in 2019, S$9,000 in 2020, S$3,000 in 2021 and S$175,000 last year.
Giving these details in response to a question by Member of Parliament Desmond Choo, Associate Professor Faishal said the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) is taking a “multi-faceted approach” – including the blocking of scam content, enhancing safeguards on digital platforms and public education – to deal with concert ticket scams.
He added that the police are working closely with social media and e-commerce platforms to remove scam advertisements for concert tickets, as well as accounts involved in such scams, as soon as these are detected.
In July, MHA passed the Online Criminal Harms Act, which will allow the government to order online platforms to disable online criminal content and activities, including scams.
“The government can also require providers of designated online services to introduce upstream measures, such as user verification, to prevent scams from occurring in the first place,” said Assoc Prof Faishal.
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Many top international acts are choosing Singapore as a destination for their shows, he said. The likes of Blackpink, Taylor Swift, Coldplay and Jacky Cheung have sold out multiple concerts for their performances in Singapore.
Choo noted that because these major performers have chosen to come to Singapore, it has resulted in the country becoming a “regional hub for entertainment”.
As such, there is a growing need to safeguard the trust that people have in Singapore, said Choo, who also asked if there were other measures that concert operators and promoters could take to make ticket transfers more secure.
Scammers have taken advantage of Singapore’s popularity as a concert destination to perpetrate scams, said Assoc Prof Faishal.
“We (will) continue to work with the platforms, platform operators, as well as the organisers of the concert in this case, not only to make sure that we as far as possible close the gap (and) at the same time, also go upstream and share with the public what they should look out for and always go to authorised ticket sellers,” he said.
“Ultimately, the best defence against scams is a discerning public,” said Assoc Prof Faishal, who advised buyers to improve their digital security with anti-virus software and multi-factor authentication, as well as to check the seller’s feedback and verify the authenticity of the tickets in-person before making any payment.
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