“People aren’t listening to that little voice that tells them to walk away”: A TPS fraud cop on the rise of Taylor Swift ticket scams

Starting this week, tens of thousands of Taylor Swift fans will attend the pop icon’s epic Eras Tour at the Rogers Centre—and almost 31 million fans will not. That’s the estimated number of people who registered to buy tickets for one of six Toronto shows, creating a supply-and-demand gap that sucks for Swifties but is a gold mine for internet scammers. Since last summer, fraudulent Taylor tickets have become so common that the Toronto Police Service’s fraud department addressed the issue as part of its #DontGetScammed campaign on social media. Here, David Coffey, a financial crimes unit detective and the head of the TPS’s fraud intake office, talks red flags and why your random Facebook friend is not a reliable ticket source.

Based on your social media campaign, Taylor Swift ticket fraud is an issue. How big is the problem? This is definitely not the first time we’ve had reports of fraud relating to concert tickets, but the Eras Tour is at a level we haven’t seen before. The central fraud intake office that I manage is a relatively new unit—we launched in May 2023. Before that, instances of fraud in Toronto went to the corresponding division, so if you were the victim of a scam downtown, you would report to 52 Division. Individual complaints would be managed by the one or two fraud investigators at that location, which meant that rising trends—be it taxi scams or fake Taylor Swift tickets—were harder to track. We have a dashboard where we track all reported fraud across the city. I can tell you that there have been more than 14,500 this year as of late October, totalling approximately $335 million in losses. And then we use an Excel spreadsheet to track anything that might be prominent or newsworthy—tabs representing the various subcategories.

An Excel sheet? I know. People think that we operate using the kind of tech you see on crime shows, but that’s not the case.

Is there a Taylor tab in your spreadsheet? The tab is called Ticks, as in ticket scams. We have had a total of 120 reports for 2024, and if you look down the doc, it’s almost all Taylor Swift.

What’s the biggest loss you’ve heard about so far? We had a report for $4,000, which was someone who had purchased two tickets, but most reports are in the $800-to-$2,000 range. I’m sure there have been larger ones.

You mentioned launching your fraud hub in May 2023. Isn’t that around when Taylor announced that she was coming to Toronto? We launched the central office as a response to the explosion of grandparent scams that happened during the pandemic, when more people were at home alone, online and vulnerable. We knew that this was becoming a problem, but it was hard to say how big of a problem without a central department, so that’s why we came together last spring. Taylor didn’t announce her Toronto concerts until August 2023, but I do remember when that announcement came and we all looked at each other and said, “Okay, I guess we know what’s coming.” Then the tickets went on sale, and by September, it was definitely something we were hearing more and more about.

Can you describe how exactly the scams work? Well, there are a few different types of fraud happening. There are people who bought tickets through Ticketmaster and who have had their accounts hacked and the tickets disappear. That is something Ticketmaster is dealing with. In terms of the reports we’re getting, early on it was mostly happening on Facebook Marketplace. So you’d have these bad actors creating accounts called, like, “Taylor Swift fans,” and the victims would go to them seeking these tickets. They would start a conversation, and maybe the scammer would send them a screenshot of the “ticket,” which is very easy to fake, especially with basic AI tools. After being promised that they would receive the tickets, the buyer would send the scammer money, and then suddenly the scammer would stop responding. More recently, we’ve also seen instances where someone a buyer was friends with on Facebook or Instagram was posting about having Taylor Swift tickets to sell. The buyer would reach out thinking that they were corresponding with someone they knew, but it was actually a hacker who had taken over their account. And then they’d create a fake email under the friend’s name where the buyer could send the money. And then the “friend” would go silent.

What happens to the people whose accounts have been hacked? That’s another kind of report we’ve gotten. They’re not losing money on fake tickets, but they are victims of identity theft, and that has the potential to get a lot messier.

Do you have a sense of who these fraudsters are? Are they locals or the same people running romance scams out of Nigeria? It’s hard to say, but it’s likely both. Fraud is a high-reward, low-risk endeavour, so it’s attractive to all kinds of criminals. It’s certainly popular with organized crime, both locally and internationally, whether they’re coordinating ticket, crypto or romance scams. Only fools rob banks anymore.

How does your team get involved? We respond to every complaint that comes in, so if you report a scam, one of my officers will call and get the details. We take these reports seriously, but unfortunately, after money has been transferred, there’s not a lot we can do—that’s just the nature of cybercrime.

Couldn’t you track the fraudster’s activity to an IP address and a specific location, or is that also an only-on-TV thing? Those are production orders that take days to write and months to get results from, so it becomes a matter of resources. I don’t want to discourage anyone from reporting, because there is always a chance that we can link individual cases together, and maybe then it makes sense to pursue. But, like I said, we’re dealing with a huge backlog of complaints, and the vast majority of them involve a lot more money than these ticket scams, so we have to prioritize.

Compared to other types of fraud victims, how devastated are scammed Swifties? There’s a huge amount of disappointment—they’re hoping for a different outcome. We know how committed this group of fans is. At the same time, in most cases, the fact that they have been scammed does not come as a complete shock. Something I hear from my team is that the people who are sending money for these tickets know that they are taking a risk, so when it turns out to be a scam, it’s often more a case of confirming that voice in the back of their head that they weren’t listening to, the one saying they should walk away. It’s not that they entirely miss the red flags so much as they decide to ignore them based on desperation—and this is key to how scammers operate.

Okay, so a nagging feeling is one red flag. What are some others? Urgency is a big one—like the seller saying they absolutely need the money right now or you will miss out. Scammers operate that way because they know that if you have a chance to step back and think or maybe even to discuss the situation with someone else, then they’ve probably lost you. Then there is the old adage about things that seem too good to be true. We know that Taylor Swift tickets are selling on legitimate resale platforms for several thousand dollars. So why would some random Facebook friend be willing to sell them for hundreds? It defies common sense.

Why aren’t scammers trying for a bigger payday? I was thinking about that and how, in some ways, if they were selling tickets for their current value, that might actually lend credibility. But I think it’s a case of targeting a broad victim pool, meaning there are a lot more people willing to risk $600 on a ticket than those willing to risk $2,000. It’s similar to phishing scams, where they are playing a numbers game. Most people just delete the messages, but if they are able to dupe just 0.1 per cent of a million people...

Or 31 million people, in the case of this particular potential victim pool. Right. Demand is huge, and that’s how we know that the scammers are going to be all over it. Right now it’s Taylor Swift, but after her shows are over, it will be Oasis, FIFA 2026, playoff sports games…

To address fraud, Ticketmaster adjusted its policy so that tickets can be transferred only within 72 hours of the show. How does that make a difference? I think what they are doing relates specifically to the scams where people’s Ticketmaster accounts are being broken into and their concert tickets are being transferred out of them. By waiting until 72 hours before the event to give purchasers their tickets, they are cutting down on the amount of time hackers have to do what they do.

Could the company be doing more to protect its customers? I’m not sure about Ticketmaster, but I would like to see social media platforms taking some responsibility. They know what’s happening, and they do nothing.

Do weak passwords make a ticket holder more vulnerable? Absolutely. Stronger passwords, multi-factor authentication, and being vigilant about your bank account and credit card statements will help.

Given this new 72-hour policy, I guess a lot of people are going to learn the bad news only three days before the show. To quote the great Taylor Swift, “Are you ready for it?" My team is here to take any reports, and we encourage anyone who has been victimized to reach out. I’m not sure what we’ll see in the next few days, but I hope that we are getting the word out to raise awareness. I realize that not going to the concert might be heartbreaking to some fans, but so is getting scammed.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.