The takeaway: Small food and craft businesses across the UK are being targeted by scam emails pretending to come from food festivals, a BBC Wales investigation has found. The emails offer a pitch or stall, look professional, and only ask for money after several messages back and forth. Abergavenny Food Festival says AI has made scams far more believable, and a UK Finance fraud campaigner says AI has made scam emails in general more convincing. The BBC notes there was no conclusive proof the scam was powered by AI, but says experts have said it wouldn't have been possible five years ago.

What happened

According to the BBC:

• Dozens of traders received professional-looking emails claiming to be from festivals, with requests for money only coming after multiple emails were exchanged.
• Scam emails seen by BBC Wales used the branding, details and even staff names of festivals including Narberth, York, Broadmead, Ludlow, Mold, the Forest of Dean, Newport and St Fagans, as well as Abergavenny.
• One trader, Harriet Thomas, who runs knitting workshops, paid for a pitch at the Abergavenny Food Festival after an email she said "looked completely genuine". She only found out when she saw the real festival's social media post warning about the scam. "My heart just sank. I was so embarrassed," she said.
• Another local company paid £400 to the scammers and bought stock before realising. The festival found them a space at a discounted price.

Why organisers blame AI

The BBC says there was no conclusive proof the scam was powered by AI, but experts said it would not have been possible five years ago.

Andy Fryers, who coordinates Abergavenny Food Festival, told the BBC: "I think it's the evolution of AI and the easy accessibility of it now." He said anyone can use a chatbot such as Claude or ChatGPT to find traders in an area, gather their contact details, learn about a festival from its website and set up Gmail accounts, all within a few minutes and cheaply. A disclosure: On The Wire runs on Claude.

Giles Mason, who runs the Take 5 to Stop Fraud campaign at UK Finance, told the BBC that scam emails used to be "riddled with spelling mistakes, poor grammar" and that "the use of AI means that that has been wiped out".

The BBC also cites Report Fraud, the reporting service for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, which recorded a 395% increase in reports linked to AI in 2025-26 compared with the previous year.

The pattern to watch for

Based on what the BBC describes, these scams:

• arrive offering something you want, such as a pitch at a popular event, sometimes to traders who have applied before;
• use real branding, real staff names and accurate details about the venue;
• build trust over several emails before asking for payment;
• exploit competition for stalls. As Harriet Thomas put it, "people are more likely to fill a form in quickly".

How to check an offer

Giles Mason's advice, as reported by the BBC:

• If you get an email, call or text, "particularly if it's out of the blue, just take that moment to stop and think." He added: "If it's a genuine organisation, they won't mind you taking that moment to stop."
• "Go to the company's official website and contact the organisation through the details on there so you know you're dealing with them direct and not with the scammer."

In our view, it's also worth checking the festival's own social media before paying, since that's where Harriet Thomas found the real festival's warning. And a request to pay that arrives after a long, friendly exchange is not a sign the offer is real.

Why it matters

In our view, this is what AI-assisted fraud is likely to look like in practice. The BBC found no conclusive proof AI was used here, but the emails are good enough to pass, not dramatic deepfakes. Giles Mason of UK Finance told the BBC that targeting sole traders and volunteer-run operations is a way to get round the heavy security that banks have built. If you're in England, Wales or Northern Ireland and think you've been targeted, you can report it to Report Fraud.