VANCOUVER – Hundreds of people were left disappointed Sunday night when they realized the tickets they had purchased to see Maroon 5 at Rogers Arena were fake.
Richmond resident Stephanie Buggera had spent $200 on her ticket, which she bought off Craigslist.
“I was nervous because I had never bought tickets off Craigslist before,” she says. Her friend had met up with a young woman to purchase the two tickets in person.
When Buggera and her friend arrived at Rogers Arena for the show, they found out their tickets wouldn’t scan. “They told us to go down to the box office,” she says. “There were about 30 other people in line there already.”
They were told their tickets were fake and the gate and floor did not even correspond to Rogers Arena. There was little staff could do, other than offer the duo a form to fill out and report the fraud.
Buggera and her friend did get to go to the concert in the end, but they paid $100 each for tickets behind the stage.
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The Vancouver Police Department says it cannot confirm how many reported cases of fake tickets were related to the Maroon 5 concert, but say ticket scams are an ongoing problem.
“The VPD supports purchasing tickets through a legitimate retailer and avoid using second hand selling sites as buyers have little recourse if they are duped out their cash,” says Sgt. Randy Fincham in an email. “There is a high probability that if you are purchasing tickets through such a site, they will be counterfeit.”
He says there are a few ways to minimize the risk, “such as obtaining legitimate identification from the seller, meeting in a public place with video surveillance and having tickets electronically transferred to your account, but of course nothing is foolproof. Criminals are also getting extremely sophisticated with their reproductions and it is getting more difficult to tell the real tickets from the fakes.”
The VPD has even placed online ads, warning people they may be buying fraudulent tickets.
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