REVOLUT HAS URGED customers to be vigilant after it recorded a significant increase in people being hit with ticket scams ahead of this weekend’s decisive Six Nations clash with France.

The digital bank, which has three million Irish customers, has noticed a spike in fraudsters purporting to be selling tickets on Facebook, X and WhatsApp to the showdown at the Aviva Stadium on Saturday 

It claims that the customers falling victim to the ruse are most commonly in the 25-34 age bracket. 

General manager of the bank’s Ireland branch, Malcolm Craig, lamented the exploitation of rugby fans’ vulnerability in scrambling for tickets to the game and urged would-be ticket-buyers to pay attention.

“Sadly, fraudsters capitalise on the scarcity and demand for these events, particularly ahead of Championship-defining matches such as this weekend’s.”

If you are searching online for tickets to a highly anticipated event, Revolut has advised customers on how to recognise tactics employed by scam artists hoping to make a buck:

• Impossible to meet in person: Scammers don’t admit to living outside of the country where the event is taking place, and prefer to make deals online instead of meeting face-to-face to exchange the promised goods.

• Unregulated environments: The scammer will often use unofficial sites or social media marketplaces, such as Facebook Marketplace, to dodge stringent verification rules.

• “Too good to be true”: The old adage applies here when tickets are being sold at  low prices compared to the true original price paid by ticketholders through verified sites.

• FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out): Fraudster deviance knows no bounds, relying on your desperation to get your hands on tickets after the seller claims to have received offers from other imaginary punters.

• False photos: They may send you screenshots (often belonging to a legitimate ticketholder) of the promised tickets as evidence of having them in their possession.

A poll conducted by the Bank of Ireland last year showed that 94% of people had been targeted by a fraudster in the 12 months before, with text messaging accounting for 89% of cases. 

Ireland’s telecom registry, the Commission for Communications Regulation,  (ComReg) convened a taskforce in 2022 amid concerns about the perceived trustworthiness and integrity of text messaging as a means of communication following a significant nationwide surge in fraudulent texts.

Last month, ComReg announced it is developing an SMS Sender ID Registry to prevent Short Message Service (SMS) scams.