News: A Warning About Ticket Scams

Several Toriphiles in the New York area have recently been targeted by a scam artist selling tickets for Tori’s Madison Square Garden shows on Craigslist.

In the one case we have specific details about, the scammer exchanged emails with the mark and arranged to meet her at a subway stop in Queens where tickets and money were exchanged.

A few days later, the mark saw a Craigslist posting from another Toriphile warning people about the scam. The victim contacted the poster, notes were compared, and they discovered they were both ripped off by the same person. The victim then called Ticketmaster and confirmed that the order numbers on the tickets were indeed bogus. This victim lost $140; the victim who posted warning others of the scam lost $180.

The con artist is described as a tall, hairy, obese male with greasy hair, glasses, and an unkempt appearance. He later taunted one of his victims in a text-message session, admitting to the scam and calling the victim a “sucker.”

As always, be extremely cautious about buying from individuals reselling tickets on the street, on sites like Craigslist, or in online auctions. Sure, some tickets will be legitimate, but a lot are counterfeit. If you feel you have no choice but to buy from a reseller, we strongly recommend you purchase through a ticket brokering agency rather than from an individual. Ticket brokers have two things going for them that street scalpers do not: 1) they are usually registered businesses that must abide by certain laws in order to resell tickets on the secondary market, and 2) you’ll pay a lot more, but the tickets they are selling are more likely to be real. Try to stick with agencies that are members of the National Association of Ticket Brokers. (You can check to see if an agency is a member of NATB here. Agencies are listed according to the state where their business offices are located, not by the state/city where you want to buy tickets, so to check on, say, gotickets.com, enter “Go Tickets” into the company name field and click submit.)

At the very least, you may want to read NATB’s Do’s And Dont’s Tip Sheet before buying secondary market tickets from any source.

And remember, do not purchase from ANYONE claiming to be selling Gold or Platinum VIP tickets to Tori shows. VIP tickets are registered to specific people on the day of sale and are non-transferable.