With BFMTV, the head of the cybersecurity unit of the gendarmerie details the means implemented to fight against the scam in the sale of fake tickets for the 2024 Olympics.
A few months before the opening of the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, the attempts at scams are commensurate with the scale of the sporting event. On the sidelines of the many digital risks linked to the hacking of IT infrastructures, a much more banal danger threatens potential spectators: the counterfeit scam, while the different phases of official ticket sales started a few weeks ago.
In total, some 200 gendarmes are mobilized on this task, in collaboration with other European services, within the framework of the Europol Impact Sport Event programme. Since the beginning of March, cyber patrol officers have detected 44 illegal ticket resale sites, announces Marc Boget, head of the cybersecurity unit of the gendarmerie, to BFMTV.
“Detecting a fake site is relatively simple, there is only one that allows you to sell tickets. Elsewhere, if there are tickets, it is necessarily attempted scams” he explains. he, referring to the official website ticket office for the 2024 Olympics.
Fake tickets go on sale before the real ones
“On the last site detected, we have first sales of tickets which are not officially on sale, for a requested amount which is between three and four times higher than that of real tickets” he adds.
According to the findings of the gendarmerie, two types of scams are multiplying online. Some sites offer tickets for sale that they do not have, encouraging the victim to pay for a sesame that they will never receive.
Other sites offer real tickets for sale, at prices much higher than those practiced by the official ticket office. For Internet users, it remains very difficult to differentiate between these two practices, with the impossibility of ensuring that they will actually be able to access the event on D-Day. In total, some 13 million tickets were sold by through the official site.
