Artificial intelligence clones the Sagrada Família website to scam tourists in Barcelona this summer

Artificial intelligence clones the Sagrada Família website to scam tourists in Barcelona this summer

Mossos and Cybersecurity warn of summer scams where artificial intelligence clones websites of the Sagrada Família, Montserrat, and elite restaurants to steal tourists' bank details.

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The Mossos d'Esquadra and the Agència de Ciberseguretat de Catalunya have detected a new scam that uses artificial intelligence to clone official ticket sales websites for highly visited venues such as the Sagrada Família or Montserrat.

The fraud arrives in the middle of the holiday season and expands a pattern that already affects tourist bookings, accommodations, and prestigious restaurants, with increasingly credible fake pages and messages that impersonate real businesses to capture payments or bank details.

Mossos and Ciberseguretat Detect Fake Copies of Tickets for Sagrada Família and Montserrat

The Mossos d'Esquadra have asked to exercise extreme caution when buying tickets online during the summer.

"When you buy tickets for activities this holiday season, be suspicious of prices that are too low and check that the website is the official one" - Mossos d'Esquadra

The alert focuses on pages that imitate official ticket sales portals to attract visitors with especially low prices. In these cases, the economic lure acts as the initial hook, and the website copy aims to get the user to complete the payment without detecting the deception.

Furthermore, the Agència de Ciberseguretat de Catalunya warns that artificial intelligence has reduced one of the signs that previously exposed many frauds.

"AI can be a great ally for organizing outings, but it also helps cybercriminals create increasingly credible fake ticket sales websites" - Agència de Ciberseguretat de Catalunya

This imitation capability is not limited to monuments or tourist sites. Cybercriminals also clone pages of restaurants such as Disfrutar Barcelona or El Celler de Can Roca to charge for non-existent reservations, a practice that expands the risk to very different leisure plans inside and outside of Barcelona.

The Fraud Also Reaches Hotels, Apartments, and Reservations Made via WhatsApp

Incibe and the Agència de Ciberseguretat de Catalunya have warned of another method that starts with real reservations in hotels or apartments. Attackers contact users via WhatsApp and impersonate the establishment to request bank details through fake links, as already happened in falsified hotel messages.

In the weeks leading up to the holidays, the National Police and the Guardia Civil have already warned that these types of frauds linked to travel and accommodation increase considerably. The same pressure to close a reservation or not lose an activity works in favor of the scammers when the contact arrives with a legitimate appearance.

The Guardia Civil and the RFEF have also warned of fraudulent websites offering fake tickets for Spanish national football team matches.

That same impersonation scheme has already been seen in fake reservation reminders sent by WhatsApp, where the criminal uses real travel data to reinforce the credibility of the message.

The recommendation shared by the organizations is to distrust abnormally low prices, avoid links received by messaging, and always go to the official website of the venue, hotel, or restaurant before entering payment details.