While on my way to the office, listening to radio as usual, I heard 103.8 discuss about a woman who had been scammed into buying Bruno mars concert tickets in Dubai. A friend of mine recently purchased tickets for another show, and it immediately hit me how people I know, my friends, my family members could easily be scammed into something the woman went through. So here I share details of what exactly happened with the woman in the Bruno Mars Ticket Scam as reference for others to be careful
- As per the woman, an Ad showed up on her Instagram about Bruno Mars performing in Dubai
- She is a Bruno Mars fan and found this to be interesting. She clicked on the Ad, and upon reaching the next page, everything looked normal.
- Since she wanted to gift the tickets to someone, she went ahead and purchased it.
- She also visited the Instagram page which was filled with Bruno Mars pictures.
- Now, since she was looking for more information, specifically about fan interaction, while searching and browsing, she found another page which questioned about the legitimacy of the website, and if there was actually any Bruno Mars show happening in Dubai
- This is when she started to get doubts about the tickets she had purchased. Upon reading more she realized she had JUST BEEN SCAMMED.
- She went back to the Instagram page and realized the only posts on the account were of Bruno Mars.
- Another thing she noted was how the Ad showed urgency and wanted her to purchase the tickets immediately since only few were left.
- She raised a request to block her card and also reported the transaction to bank, asking them to reverse the amount.
- The woman added that she kind of does not blame herself for this, since all the information including the Instagram, the website etc looked so real that it was very difficult to spot a scam
It is commendable that the woman decided to come up on a radio channel and share her story which will caution many people to be more careful and hopefully raise awareness about such scams. Here, I would also like to share some pointers on some of the key things to note when verifying if
- Urgency- One of the most common methods used by scamsters is to create an urgency and urge the users to take action immediately, that is to pay immediately or else they would lose the deal. This is a common marketing tool used by genuine sellers, therefore in today’s times, we need to look for multiple sources for information to confirm
- Language- Although this is something that is getting better and better, like in case of the scammed woman, where all the information looked too genuine and polished. However, the grammatical mistakes, the repeated spelling mistakes are also something to look for.
- Find more Sources- In this particular scam itself there are many things wrong. The Instagram page of the event organizer only had Bruno Mars pictures, as if only created for this particular scam. There were no posts or stories by Bruno Mars himself on his insta account, neither was there any such information on his website. The claimed sponsor Live Nation had not done any promotion of Bruno Mars coming to Dubai.
- Buy only from popular/known platforms- A caveat in this point is that scamsters spoof the website names, there would be ever so slight difference in the domain name and the website could be a fake. So even if you are buying from a reputed platform like platinumlist, verify the details mentioned above before proceeding further.
With technology developing so rapidly, and online payments becoming common, it has become almost impossible to identify what is real and what is fake. The Scams are getting easier to execute, difficult to identify and hence will only keep increasing. No one is spared, even my 60+ year old mother receives calls asking for all kinds of information. The one thing that I do and I think most people do is, when it comes to online payment, I verify with the 4 points mentioned above and only then process the payments.
Links-
Bruno Mars in Dubai – MENACircus – April 5, 2025
byu/Existing-Elk8648 inBrunoMars
