Woman scammed friends and colleagues out of £3k with fake Taylor Swift tickets

A woman scammed her friends and colleagues out of £3,000 by selling them fake Taylor Swift tickets.

Amy Rees, 38, of Nantymoel, Bridgend, was given a 35-week suspended prison sentence after previously admitting 12 charges of fraud totalling £3,042.90.

Cardiff Magistrates' Court heard many of Rees' victims were within the community where she lived, including someone she had known for 36 years.

The court heard how parents had to tell their heartbroken young daughters they were no longer going to see Swift perform at Cardiff's Principality Stadium in June 2024 as part of her 21-month Eras tour which visited 50 cities.

Prosecuting solicitor Robert Reid told the court that interest in the Taylor Swift gig in Cardiff had been intense.

"Clearly all of us would have to have been living in a barrel for the last 20 years to not know that, for an awful lot of people, going to a Taylor Swift concert would be seen as a fabulous treat," he said.

He said victim impact statements revealed the "disappointment of young people on suddenly finding out they are not going to a Taylor Swift concert".

Reid said people handed over cash but "as the date of the concert began to arrive, there were various evasive replies to enquiries as to where the tickets were".

The court heard some banks had refused to compensate victims because of their "personal connection" to Amy Rees, who worked in her local doctor's surgery and had used the team's WhatsApp group to spread word about the fake tickets, as well as through social media.

The court heard that as the fraud unravelled, she tried to blame a work colleague, and faked emails from Ticketmaster, suggesting she had been a victim of fraud.

Victims included work colleagues, mothers from her daughter's school and long-time acquaintances and friends from the community.

The biggest amount defrauded against a single person was £623.

One mother said she ended up paying an "exorbitant price" for real tickets the day before the concert, as it became clear she had been scammed by Rees.

Another said the situation "completely broke her daughter" as it became clear the tickets, which had been meant as a Christmas present, were not real.

The court also heard one victim became an "innocent agent" of the fraud by unwittingly introducing Rees to other people who wanted tickets who she then went on to defraud.

One said "this entire ordeal has had a massive effect on me and left me financially short for a period".

The court heard Rees was pregnant and had three children and was the sole carer for them.

Defending, Sian Brain said Rees had "never appeared before a court" and the behaviour was "completely out of character".

Sentencing Rees, deputy district judge Paul Conlon said she created a "web of deceit" against people who trusted her.

He said the offending was so serious that a jail term was necessary but that he felt the circumstances meant it should not be immediate.

Rees was sentenced to 35 weeks for each of the 12 offences, to run concurrently with the sentence suspended for 12 months.

She was ordered to pay £1,076 in compensation to six victims who had not received compensation from their banks with payment to be deducted from her Universal Credit payments.

Rees admitted the offences, which took place between September 2023 and June 2024, at an earlier hearing at the court on 16 February.