14 DAY TRIAL // An experiment conducted by scam-tracking outfit Scam Detectives, which involved offering fake tickets to the upcoming Royal Wedding, demonstrated that, had they used a similar approach, scammers could have made £33,000 in twelve hours.
Determined to show people how easy they could become victims of online scams, Scam Detectives used a free hosting service to set up a fake Web page selling so called "golden tickets" to Prince William's wedding next April.
The website was timed to go live shortly after the date and venue of the event were announced and the outfit spammed it on classified sites, Twitter, Facebook and popular forums.
According to Scam Detectives, the first visitors landed on the website after 3 minutes and they kept coming in at a rate of 1 visitor every 6 minutes.
Twelve hours later, the website had attracted over 160 people who displayed a willingness to pay a price of £250 for a ticket.
In order to entice people even more, the website promised that one of the guests will have the honor of appearing in the royal couple's wedding photographs.
"Visitors to this website were very lucky. Had this been a real scam they would not only have lost their L250, but would also have handed over their credit card details to criminals who would have gone on a shopping spree, maxing out the credit limit within hours," commented Scam Detectives editor Charles Conway.
He also points out that more aggressive tactics like paid Google advertising or black hat SEO, could have attracted a lot more users.
Also, in an ironic twist, The Sun later announced that 100 members of the public will actually be randomly selected to take part in the wedding.
News surrounding the royal wedding have already been exploited by cybercriminals to push malware by poisoning releated search results with malicious links.