A Mullingar ‘Swiftie’ has spoken about how he narrowly avoided falling victim to a fraudulent ticketing scam in a hopeful bid to see the Tennessee superstar live in Dublin.
Shane Barkey (picured) missed out on buying tickets in the original sale for the three Taylor Swift concerts at the Aviva Stadium from Friday, 28 June to Sunday, 30 June.
Around 150,000 concert-goers got to witness the record-breaking ‘Eras Tour’ live, but Shane was not one of them, and nearly paid out €600 to an online scammer, who was advertising four tickets for the concert.
Prior to the Dublin-leg of Taylor Swift’s world tour, fans were warned to “act swiftly” by Bank of Ireland if they thought they had been targeted by online fraudsters.
Speaking on Prime Time on RTÉ One, Shane said: “A friend of mine got on to me, sent me a screenshot of her cousin’s Facebook page, saying that she was selling four tickets for the Taylor Swift concert on Saturday (29 June).
“It was very realistic in the sense that I was speaking to somebody on their Facebook.
“I just started to get a bit suspicious because this person in question was kind of saying weird things and spelling things weirdly. I said, ‘look, there is something that is not sitting with me right here.’ So I said, ‘Can you take a phone call?’”
Shane continued: “She said, ‘no, I don’t do phone calls.’ As soon as she said that she doesn’t do phone calls, I knew it was a scam.
“I nearly just handed over €600 in desperation basically. The funny thing is, the last time Taylor Swift was in Dublin, I actually got free tickets to see her in Croke Park because they were struggling to sell the second night.
“A load of people got free tickets so it was quite the opposite this time around.”
