A website claiming to be affiliated with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam was found to be harvesting credit card information from people who were trying to buy tickets to the institution, according to the Art Newspaper.
Around 50 people, the website, vangoghshop.pro, had offered tickets for dates that were unavailable on the museum’s official website.
The museum issued a warning on its website: “Beware of scammers, buy your tickets at tickets.vangoghmuseum.com.” Moreover, the museum said, the official site is the only place tickets can be purchased. The other website has since been shut down.
Some were drawn to the fraudulent site due to the popularity of the Van Gogh Museum’s current temporary exhibition, “Matthew Wong l Vincent van Gogh: Painting as a Last Resort September.” The show is being billed as Wong’s first major exhibition in Europe and runs through September 1.
According to the news outlet Parool, one tourist who used vangoghshop.pro received two tickets in the mail, only to find that the tickets were dated April 28, 2017.
In a statement, the museum said “more than half of these individuals indicated that they didn’t trust the website, and they [didn’t leave] any information. Those who have actually been affected have contacted us, and we advised them to contact their bank immediately and file a report… We have made every effort to warn visitors.”
