Both Lund University and ESN Lund warn new international students about fraudulent welcome events. During the summer, several of them bought tickets for parties of a suspicious organisation posing as a student union.
In addition to the hurdles of living in a new town, international students have to avoid scams when it comes to buying a bike, renting an accommodation – or buying tickets for a party.
During Orientation Weeks, Lund University and Erasmus Student Network (ESN) Lund warned new international students in Lund about fraudulent welcome events. Lund University (LU) recommended new students to ”verify the legitimacy of any organisation or union before purchasing tickets”, in an announcement published on the 16th of September.
Treasurer of ESN Lund, Elias Jollivet also alerted new international students regarding the events of an organisation claiming to be a student union. In early July, several new international students at Lund University had received an email from the organization. Two ”Semester Welcome Parties” in Malmö, as well as halloween and christmas parties were mentioned in the emails, with tickets being offered at discount prices. Hundreds of international students bought tickets for these events.
In September, Elias Jollivet deleted several messages in the ESN Lund group chat from students that were reselling their tickets to these parties. In his role at ESN, he has encountered similar organizations before.
– This kind of scam happens regularly. For example I had heard about [another group accused of scam]. They sent the same type of messages to new students about welcoming parties. As soon as you dig a bit you see that it’s not a reliable organisation, says Elias Jollivet.
– For this one it’s the same principle. On their website, there is no information about how to contact them, who they are… it’s clearly suspicious. It was the right call to not allow people to use our Whatsapp group to resell tickets from a shady business.
The other organisation Elias Jollivet heard about says that scams probably exists, but ensures that they are not a part of it.
”Our organization and the events we organize are legitimate. We collaborate with hundreds of venues across many cities. We can imagine there are scams happening: fake ticket websites, housing scams etc. But not here.”
When Hervé received an email from the organisation claiming to be a student union in the summer, he didn’t have full knowledge about the student life in Lund. Like the other students we interviewed, Hervé was surprised to receive the email on his personal email address as opposed to his student email adress.
– I had bought tickets for three parties from [the organisation claiming to be a student union], which most people would say it’s a scam, explains Hervé, who says he spent roughly twenty euros on the tickets.
– I was already a bit suspicious but the prices were quite appealing, Hervé says.
Before coming to Lund, he had also bought a ”Study Abroad Guide” from the same organisation but received nothing. He also didn’t try to take the train to Malmö to check if the party was real, beliveing it was a scam.
Very few people went to the establishment in Malmö where the welcoming events were supposed to take place, on the 7th and the 14th of September. Jasper van der Blom and his friends showed up on the 7th.
– When we arrived at the rooftop there were two security guys scanning the tickets. But inside there was almost nobody, we stayed for like an hour but I think in that timespan only 20 other people were there, even though the party was sold out with 300 tickets as the organisation sent by mail, he recalls.
Jasper van der Blom also says that there were no representatives from the organization present at the party.
– The whole thing was a bit weird because no one exactly knew what to expect.
On the 14th of September, for the second ”welcoming party”, a similar situation happened: Very few of the guests, and none of the organizers were present.
The organisation arranges parties in several places around the world, many of them in central Europe. When Lundagård contacts the venues of the parties, they give a story similar to what transpired in Malmö. It turns out that members of the organization never showed up at the events. In some cases, ticket holder have no discounts on food or drinks and are received like any other customer.
– You don’t receive what you think you’re getting, so in that sense it is a scam, says Elias Jollivet.
