The real World Cup ticket site.

Websites selling fraudulent tickets for this summer’s World Cup finals in South Africa will be the focus of a new government enforcement team government cracking down on online scams, The Guardian reported today.

The cyber squad will be set up as part of a £4.3 million investment by the government over three years to tackle internet and e-mail cons. Some 73 percent of adults in the UK received a scam e-mail and three million consumers were victims of online scams in the past year, according to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT). The issue was also highlighted in the Digital Britain Report, released in June 2009, which emphasised the need to ensure consumers are confident and safe when shopping online.

The cyber enforcement team will train with international cybercrime experts and work in a new laboratory with specialist equipment to support the OFT’s enforcement work, reported Computer Weekly. The government initiative will also see new highly trained Trading Standards enforcers active in England, Scotland and Wales.

Enforcers will focus on fake products and traders, counterfeit ticket sales and scam websites aimed at duping consumers into paying for counterfeit or non-existent goods. The team will use “sophisticated technology to gather evidence to a criminal standard” and will make test purchases from ­websites that it suspects of acting ­unlawfully, The Guardian noted.

Last year, a number of fake websites claiming to sell tickets for the Reading, Leeds and V festivals – as well as for the Beijing Olympics in 2008 – shut down, leaving thousands of fans without tickets and significantly out of pocket. It is estimated that online fraud incidents reach the 3 million mark in the UK every year and result in losses of £3.5 billion, according to figures published in the Ecommerce Journal.

BBC News reported that the funding will be used, in addition, to target legitimate companies which fail to offer customers the rights, such as refunds, to which they are entitled when shopping online. The government also plans to set up a complaints register where people can notify others of online scams, which is expected to be in place by the end of 2010.

EWeek Europe suggested that the announcement may be linked to the discovery by a team of researchers at Cambridge University last week of a flaw in the chip and PIN payment system that allows fraudsters to use stolen credit and debit cards without knowing the PIN number.