Several students have been targeted in a recent increase in Ticketbridge scams, with fake profiles purporting to be selling tickets to May Week events and other popular club nights.

Scammers have joined the private Facebook group using fake profiles to comment under students’ posts asking buyers to privately message them, claiming they have tickets to sell.

Ticketbridge currently has over 23 thousand members and students are required to answer Cambridge-related questions to prove their identity when joining the group.

Lennon Crandle, a second-year at Lucy Cavendish, was caught in a scam by a seller named “Emily Chloe”. The student was scammed out of £40 after purchasing four club tickets, to an event at Lola Lo’s on Caesarian Sunday, via a Revolut payment link. Crandle was later able to claim the money back from Revolut.

The student has since posted on Ticketbridge making people aware of the scam. Several similar warning posts have also been uploaded, alerting users of the rise in scams as May Week approaches and the demand for event tickets increases.

Alfred Jacquemot, moderator of Ticketbridge, described the difficulty of preventing this type of activity: “There are currently a set of security precautions that aim to prevent the entry of scammers into the group. Despite this, given we have over 23 thousand members and have reviewed far more than that number, the occasional nefarious profile does creep in.”

“Once in the group, it is very difficult to identify them until they act out. In addition to this, recently we have seen instances where these scammers add other fake accounts into the group which makes the problem even more challenging. We do need help from the community to identify the remaining scammers and fake accounts,” he told Varsity.

Jacquemot also said that Ticketbridge is “looking to grow the moderator group with current students to allow for quicker and more diligent reviewing”.