The 2024 Paris Olympics are already attracting scammers. Some take advantage of the event to sell real and fake tickets at exorbitant prices on fraudulent sites. Be careful not to get tricked!
As the opening of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris is fast approaching, cybercriminals are gradually starting to take action. Indeed, by the people it attracts and the enthusiasm it arouses, the event is the ideal opportunity to defraud people who are naive or uncomfortable with the Internet and online purchases! And for that, they can count on the classic, but very effective, counterfeit money scam.
As a reminder, the first phase of ticket sales for the 2024 Olympics began in February, in the form of packs, while a second opened this Thursday, May 11, this time individually. And as much to say that the first phase was a real success with 3.25 million tickets sold on the Olympic site in a few weeks, despite sometimes high prices – places range from 24 to 2,700 euros for the opening ceremony. . And while scam sites are pretty easy to spot, given that there’s simply only one official site that sells tickets (tickets.paris2024.org) – any other site is therefore necessarily a scam – they can quickly be very tempting for those who have not had the chance to be drawn.
Olympics tickets: fake tickets on sale at a high price
Only a few days after the opening of the first phase, the authorities saw offers for unit sales appear on social networks. Subsequently, things became more organized and professional, with sites created from scratch, sometimes several months in advance. If some are crude, with typos for example, others are very well made and look like real official resale sites.
In practice, there are two types of scams. The first is to sell real tickets, but at much higher prices than those charged by the official ticket office. The second sells counterfeit tickets, which the victims will never receive or which will not be valid on the spot – even though they have paid for them. “On the last site detected, we have first sales of tickets which are not yet officially on sale, for a requested amount which is between three and four times higher than that of real tickets”explains Marc Boget, head of the cybersecurity unit of the gendarmerie, to BFM TV. Other times, on the contrary, the prices are broken. It is sometimes difficult to tell the difference between these two types of scams but, in all cases, it is a question of paying dearly without knowing if one will really be able to access the event when the time comes. A real Russian roulette therefore, which is dangerous to play, even if the frustration of not having managed to obtain tickets via the official site is understandable.
In total, some 200 gendarmes are mobilized to fight against this scam, in collaboration with other European services, within the framework of the Europol Impact Sport Event program. Since the beginning of March, the various cyber patrols have detected no less than 44 illegal ticket resale sites. 17 of them have already been taken offline. But despite their vigilance, investigators fear that more and more fraudulent sites will emerge as the Olympics draw closer and single tickets are put on sale by the Olympic committee. “We are convinced that people have already bought many places to make capital gains, says Captain Étienne. But the risk of these illegal resales is above all to buy empty space! In recent days, we have seen packages for sale for 6,000 euros, without any certainty that the tickets offered by this site really exist!”explains Captain Étienne, of the Command of the Gendarmerie in cyberspace (Comcybergend), at the Parisian. A third draw phase will take place at the end of the year, while an official ticket resale site will be set up.