Lisa Riley has spoken of her devastation after losing almost £10,000 in a Stevie Wonder ticket scam. The Emmerdale actress, 50, was trying to buy tickets to see Wonder perform with her late mother, Cath, who “idolised” the singer.
Riley, who plays Mandy Dingle on the ITV soap, explained that the tickets sold out within two hours. Unable to get one, she searched for resale tickets online and found a “VIP package” website. She said the page looked incredibly professional, so she bought tickets to treat her mother, who died aged 57 following a cancer battle in 2012.
Bank alert exposed the scam
“I'm quite an astute girl, I looked at the whole page, it was flawless,” she told Good Morning Britain hosts Kate Garraway and Ranvir Singh on Friday morning. After she entered her credit card details, her bank alerted her to suspicious activity. It emerged that scammers had spent £9,600 of her money.
The scammers spent the money on “loads of different things”, including car lessons, in an incredibly short amount of time. Reflecting on the “heartbreaking” scam, she said she was eventually able to recover the money through her insurance.
Fake visa scam and AI hoax
Riley also revealed she was scammed again while applying for a US visa that turned out to be fake. She travels to New York every year and renews her ESTA (Electronic System for Travel Authorization) every two years. She knew the website used for the application and thought the page looked no different from the usual one, so she failed to spot the fraud.
She did not have the ESTA confirmed as she normally would by the next day. Instead, she received a suspicious email that alerted her to the process being fake. Riley recalled thinking: “This is so, so frightening, [the scammers] could make up a passport in my name!”
She went to Liverpool to change her passport and also changed her other details, but added: “I'm petrified that all my details are still out there.” The soap star urged others to “take a breath” while applying for visas and stay vigilant online, advising people to “automatically presume that it is going to be a scam”.
Riley then discussed a cruel AI hoax that shared fake photos of her looking pregnant alongside fake news stories, despite her fertility struggles. She has had four failed IVF attempts in the past. Reflecting on her recent encounters with scams and AI pranks, she told Garraway and Singh: “I just think... please leave me alone.”
The TV star, who is in a relationship with musician Al Benkovic, called out the “absolutely horrendous” fake pregnancy photos last week. The images include one of her holding an infant and an edited snap showing her proudly displaying a sonogram, implying she is pregnant.
Alongside a number of angry emojis, Riley wrote: “THIS HAS TO STOP!!!!! It’s absolutely horrendous!!! Saying that I’m pregnant again!! How is this allowed it makes me so upset… What world do we live in that these lies, and more lies are allowed to be put in the public domain. I’m sick to death of it now!!!”
