Scammers pose as Arctic Monkeys agents for fake tour

According to what was reported to IQ Magazine by the booking agency 13 Artists, best known for managing and planning Arctic Monkeys’ dates, some scammers posed as agents of the Sheffield band led by Alex Turner to plan a fake world tour of the group in 2025.

In a series of emails with the subject line “CONFIDENTIAL – Arctic Monkeys – Midnight Mirage World Tour 2025”, sent from a fake address – [email protected] – and accompanied by a request for recipients to reply to another fake address , [email protected], these scammers pretended to be the founder and agent of 13 Artists, Charlie Myatt, inviting the promoters to set up dates for a supposed tour of the band “Do I wanna know?”. The scammers, whose communications were seen by IQ, a news platform for the international live music industry, appear to have even created a fake website, almost identical to the Brighton-based agency’s real one. The emails and website contain telephone numbers with British prefixes (+44 20 3290 3795 and +44 79 0719 2974) which do not belong to any operator of the 13 Artists agency.

Given the long list of similar precedents, including the case linked to Ariana Grande’s tour in 2022, the British Entertainment Agents’ Association had previously published a checklist to invite promoters to carry out checks and investigations regarding the identity and reliability of an agency.

In addition to checking the email addresses of the senders and contacting the agencies to resolve doubts, avoiding using the telephone numbers reported in unreliable communications, the Entertainment Agents’ Association recommends checking the artist’s website to check for any anomalies regarding the dates of tour. Furthermore, among the rules to be implemented, it is indicated to contact the agency to confirm the booking before paying any deposit and to check with other promoters that the artist is on tour in that area in that period. The final warning reads, “If an offer is accepted and it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”

So far, Arctic Monkeys have not yet revealed plans for a new tour, which would bring them back to the stage two years after the tour in support of their last album, “The Car” (here is our review). Away from the spotlight, as usual, the band adopted secrecy and detachment from social media or the media at the end of last year’s series of concerts.