Concerts, football, basketball, and baseball games popular theme parks are all considered hot tickets. But 'where' you buy those tickets can make the difference between real and fraud.
”The scheme developed when suspects utilized modern resources like Craigslist and other classifieds to post advertisements for tickets online,” says Keegan Martin, U.S. Postal Inspector.
Once a buyer purchases those tickets…
”The suspect would actually provide them with a confirmation number and a tracking number so they could follow their tickets,” says Martin.
Those numbers were useless and the tickets were fakes.
Mounting complaints led postal inspectors to the home of the main suspects in this case—James Williams and Anthony Johnson.
”The door had been barricaded,” says Martin.
Inspectors say Williams was trying to destroy evidence even trying to flush their records down a toilet.
”We found shredded pieces of paper all around the room. He attempted to take his computer, pour water on it and throw it out the back window,” says Martin.
Inspectors caught the bad guys. Here is their advice on how to avoid this scam:
Use well-known sites like Stubhub or Ticketmaster. Prices may be a little higher than Craiglist or Ebay but tickets are authentic and guaranteed.
Before clicking "buy" on a vendor`s website, type the site into a search engine and see what results come up. That could lead you to complaints from past customers who were ripped off.
”Verify. It would have saved a lot of victims time by just doing a quick Google search to see if the company even existed,” says Martin.
Postal inspectors also suggest buying tickets with a credit card or Paypal account. They offer more protections against unfair or unauthorized charges than do debt card transactions.
James Williams was sentenced to 10 years in prison and ordered to pay back $78,000 to victims. His co-defendant, Anthony Johnson was sentenced to 7 years in prison and $66,000 in restitution.
