100 dodgy football ticket sellers shut down by cybercops

They weren't just after your money - some wanted your PC too…

The government's newly-created Police Central e-crime Unit has announced a new assault on dodgy online ticket sellers.

The unit announced on Friday that it had shut down over 100 websites suspected of selling "fraudulent or non-existent tickets" to Premiership and FA football matches.

The operation represents the third major initiative for the Unit, which launched in spring this year with a budget of £7m over three years. It has also been involved in a major investigation to target a group of suspects using a computer virus to steal money from customers' bank accounts and also made a number of arrests in a card fraud operation that targeted music on iTunes and Amazon.

According to the PCeU the initiative, known as Operation Phyllite, saw the unit work with bodies including the Premier League, FA and Fifa, as well as ISPs, registrars and Trading Standards, to shut down the illegal ticket sellers.

It's not just the risk of losing money that consumers should be worried about - victims of fraudulent ticketing sites could find themselves losing control of their PC too.

"A lot of these sites, they are either compromising computers, disseminating malware or they are trading illegally," the PCeU's Detective Superintendent Charlie McMurdie said.

"This operation was focused against football tickets but there's numerous other sites purporting to trade in different types of tickets - for Wimbledon, for example, for pop concerts - and an obvious concern is around the sale of Olympic tickets for the future. Some of the sites we have seen are already trading in Olympic tickets which again is an offence per se," McMurdie added.