Beware bogus concert and sports tickets: police
Police say concertgoers and sports fans are falling for phoney tickets as they search for hard-to-find tickets — and bargains — online.
Gananoque police chief Garry Hull says more people are falling victim to fraudsters these days by making transactions on online marketplaces like Kijiji. It's a bigger problem than the potential risk buyers face when actually meeting strangers to exchange their money for tickets, said Hull.
By the time buyers find out the tickets they bought are either fake or voided, it's too late to do anything about it, said Hull.
"You've met them at a neutral location where you really can't identify them, you gave them the money, they gave you the tickets, and the next thing you know is the tickets are bogus when you show up at the event and the person is gone with your money," he said.
Several years ago Hull's own son was one of many concert-goers who were told their tickets were "no good" after presenting a ticket bought from an online re-seller.
The worst thing you can do, according to Ticketmaster, is to post pictures of your tickets on social media. This allows scammers to take the code on your real ticket to make counterfeit ones.
Internet makes crimes easy
Hull said the internet and social media give broader access to those wishing to break the law.
In many cases of online fraud, including telephone and email scams demanding payments or bank information, the criminal is difficult to identify because they use IP addresses that bounce all over the country, he said.
"It's very difficult without lengthy, expensive investigations to identify those individuals," Hull said.
Alec Weston, a frequent concertgoer in Ottawa, said he chooses to err on the side of caution in the wake of online ticket frauds becoming more common.
"If a deal seems too good to be true, it usually is," he said.
Weston arranged to meet a man he found on Kijiji for concert tickets which were being sold for $100 less than official prices, but said he suspected he was about to be scammed when the seller changed the meeting location three times — each time to a less public place — then disconnected his phone when Weston said he had arrived at the location.
In the end, Weston called it off and forked over the extra $100 dollars for tickets he could trust were legitimate.
Some ticket marketplace websites have safeguards in place to make sure buyers are protected from fraud.
StubHub offers what it calls a 'FanProtect' guarantee.
Its website states, as a buyer, you get "valid tickets to any event or your money back. We go out of our way to find replacement tickets if there is an issue with your order. A full refund if your event is cancelled and not rescheduled."
Seatwave, a Ticketmaster company, says in its user agreement that if a seller fails to deliver tickets or delivers fraudulent, invalid, or misrepresented tickets, Seatwave will cancel the order, return the tickets to the seller and hold them liable for all losses and charges incurred in refunding the customer.
