FOI 263-2025 / Feb 2025 / Ticket scams
FREEDOM OF INFORMATION REQUEST REFERENCE NO: 263-2025
I write in connection with your request for information which was received on 26th February 2025 as follows:
I am writing to request information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. The purpose of this request is to gather data on complaints received by your police force regarding ticket scams.
Specifically, I am seeking information on the following:
- The total number of ticket fraud crime reports made to the police force for each of the past five years (from Feb 2020 to Feb 2025)
If held, please provide:
- A distinction between concert and football ticket scams
- The names of the venues identified in each report
- The name of the artist or football team identified in each report
- The total sum of money lost to the above reported ticket fraud incidents per year for each of the past five years (from Feb 2020 to Feb 2025).
- If not held as a yearly figure, please provide a list of the sum of money lost per ticket fraud incident
Please find the Warwickshire Police response set out below.
Response: Please be advised that the requested information is not held in a readily retrievable format as fraud crimes are not sub-classified into categories which would enable extraction of the requested information. In order to determine whether reference is made to a crime being in relation to a ticket scam, it would be necessary to review each and every fraud crime/referral (‘Crime Investigation – Action Fraud: Call for Service’ or ‘Crime Investigation – Action Fraud: NFIB Referral’) recorded during the stated period. This would take approximately 3-5 minutes per record to review in order to determine whether they fit the categories described in the request and then further time would be required to ascertain the further detail requested. On average there are between 500 and 600 such crimes/referrals recorded each year, which would equate to approximately 2500 to 3000 records for a 5 year period. Even taking the lower figures of 3 minutes to review 2,500 reports, this equates to 125 hours of work. This would therefore be above the amount of work to which we are legally required to undertake, i.e., the cost of locating and retrieving the information exceeds the ‘appropriate level’ (£450) as stated in the Freedom of Information (Fees and Appropriate Limit) Regulations 2004.
In accordance with Section 12 of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, this letter acts as a Refusal Notice for this request.
In accordance with Section 16 of the Act, I have a duty to provide advice and assistance in relation to your request; however, due to the number of records involved, I am unable to suggest a way to revise your request into one which could be answered within the fees limit.
I can advise that fraud offences are recorded by Action Fraud, who do further classify fraud crimes into specific categories. You may wish to approach Action Fraud, as the national fraud reporting centre, in relation to the information requested.
https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/
Every effort has been made to ensure that the information provided is as accurate as possible.
Your attention is drawn to the below which details your right of complaint.
Should you have any further enquiries concerning this matter, please write or email the Freedom of Information Unit quoting the reference number above.
Yours sincerely
Freedom of Information Officer
Freedom of Information Unit
Warwickshire Police
PO Box 4
Leek Wootton
Warwickshire
CV35 7QB