Above watch: Some Calgary Flames fans captured a ticket scammer on camera. Warning: Graphic language.
CALGARY – Flames playoff fever has hit the city, but don’t let your excitement to get tickets blind you: Be careful buying tickets online.
Timea Farkas put up a post on Kijiji looking for tickets for Sunday’s first home game last Thursday, and heard from someone with the username “Nathan Sullivan.” The person told her he had tickets he got from his grandmother that he wasn’t going to use and was happy to sell.
Farkas said she talked to him for about an hour through email and text messages, and he sent her partial screenshots of the tickets.
Farkas, who has used Kijiji for ticket sales before, said she’s never had a bad experience.
Farkas sent the $300 and never heard back, or received the tickets.
“I’m a little bit embarrassed about what happened, but there needs to be somebody to say something out there.”
She said she reported the incident to Kijij—which has a policy that will remove any future posts from that user—and police. Farkas says Calgary police said if there were other similar cases, they’d look into it, but they didn’t have any open files related to the incident when asked Tuesday by Global News.
It was a lesson also learned for Vancouver’s Matt Billon, who was traveling to Calgary for work and hoped to see Sunday’s game in person. Billon and a friend found tickets on Kijiji, then met with a man going by the name Kelley MacDonald to exchange the cash for the e-tickets which had been emailed to Billon’s email account.
“We both had a bit of a bad taste after meeting the man so we then called him back 20 minutes later from another phone to see if he was re-selling the tickets,” said Billon. “He said he had two tickets for sale…the exact seats we just bought off him for $400.”
His friend said he’d take them, and the two men confronted the scammer—capturing the incident on camera.
The man going by the name MacDonald allegedly hacked a real estate website to be able to create the email address he used to make himself look legitimate. Calgary police are investigating after Billon reported the crime as the suspect is under investigation for other fraud-related incidents. Police believe they know the scammer’s identity but had not arrested him as of Tuesday afternoon.
Police said the level of effort to appear legitimate the “seller” went to in Billon’s case was extraordinary. If caught, he could face charges of fraud and impersonation.
“I’ve been waiting for this for six years, and it was happening whether it was scalped tickets or however,” said Billon, who said he’s never had a problem buying Flames tickets on Kijiji before.
“Maybe when it’s too good to be true, it is.”
The Southern Alberta and East Kootenay Better Business Bureau (BBB) said there are three scams in particular to watch out for during playoff season: re-selling the same tickets, selling fake tickets and selling fake tickets under a fake identity.
“Since there is no limit to the amount of times a scammer can sell the same pair of e-tickets, they take payment from multiple buyers for the same tickets, only to leave the buyers empty-handed,” said the BBB.
The BBB offers these tips to avoid ticket scams:
- Verify ticket sales. Check with official ticket retailers if tickets to the event are actually on sale, and also check with the official team page for game dates so you know when you can expect to buy tickets.
- Beware of deals that seem too good to be true. They usually are!
- Never wire money to a stranger. Money transfers are hard to trace and once the money is gone, it’s gone for good. Pay with a credit card so you will have some recourse in case something goes wrong.
- Ask to meet in person. It can be anyone on the other side of a computer screen, so ask to meet the person in a public place.
- Use available tools and resources. When using sites like eBay, take note of the seller’s track record and reputation, and read the online reviews.
With files from Mia Sosiak
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