Following another surge in phishing emails last month, ARC updated the fraud-prevention area of its website and is requiring members to sign in to view information that was previously public.
So far in 2012, there have been 10 cases of unauthorized ticketing, all of which took place between Feb. 7 and March 16.
ARC said the emails originated from overseas and fraudulently appear to be from a GDS, which compels an unsuspecting agent to follow commands that lead to a website that mimics a GDS site.
Once the agent logs in, the information is captured by the fraudulent site, giving the fraudster the ID and password to access the agent’s real GDS account.
ARC said potential losses for 2012 are now up to more than $15,000, with an average price of the fraudulent ticket of $1,678. ARC would not say who would ultimately be responsible for those losses — the agents, airlines or GDSs — but said it depends on the circumstances of each case.
ARC said fraudsters usually issue and use tickets within the same day, in many cases within just hours.
Last year, 114 agencies were targets of the unauthorized ticketing scam, with potential losses of more than $900,000.
At this point in 2011, there were also seven travel agents that had been the victim of fraudulently issued tickets. The average price of those tickets was $1,339.
Follow Johanna Jainchill on Twitter @jjainchilltw.