Pair charged with selling fake tickets
People showed up at Canucks games, concerts, even Disneyland
Hundreds of people in the Vancouver area may have been duped by a couple accused of selling fake tickets to concerts, Canucks games and even Disneyland, according to police.
The man and woman are suspected of duping buyers who responded to ads on Craigslist. The number of victims is hard to estimate, Vancouver police spokesman Const. Brian Montague said, but “conservatively, you’re looking at the hundreds.”
Police allege the pair sold tickets to concerts including Taylor Swift, AC/DC, Sam Smith and Fleetwood Mac, as well as fiveday Disneyland passes.
“You can’t get much lower than selling fake tickets to Disneyland,” Montague said. “How disappointed would you be to show up at Disneyland with your family and your fiveday passes, just to find out that they’re fake?”
Arielle Federation, 22, and Colin Richardson, 30, have been charged with fraud and using forged documents. Federation has also been charged with personation by using a stolen Irish passport to gain buyers’ trust.
The charges against Federation and Richardson are linked to about 50 complaints of phoney tickets, but Montague said investigators believe there are many, many more involving the couple.
Would-be buyers met with the suspects in public places and even in the buyers’ homes, according to police. Victims told police that a woman handled the transaction, while a man waited in a vehicle nearby — on occasion with a small dog in the back seat.
The man occasionally went by the name of James Hunter, while the female seller sometimes called herself Alex or Alexandria.
Other times, she called herself Jenny Donoghue — the name on the stolen passport.
Langley resident Leah Carlson is among the dozens of people who purchased tickets from who she thought was Jenny Donoghue.
Carlson recounted how she met the seller in May outside a Langley movie theatre and paid $600 for four tickets to an upcoming and sold-out AC/DC show — tickets she now fears are likely fake.
“If she’s done this to so many people, I really doubt my four are going to be legit,” Carlson said in a Wednesday interview.
When Carlson met the seller and her male accomplice, the two appeared well put together, she said.
“They looked like a normal couple. She was very well dressed, with nice nails. Not low-life-looking at all. Very chic looking. Fashionable. You wouldn’t expect it from them.”
The transaction seemed legitimate and the seller even presented her passport, Carlson said. Normally, Carlson asks resellers to transfer tickets to her Ticketmaster account, but the seller told her she could not do that. The tale she told was that she worked at a company that has presale tickets that cannot be transferred.
After purchasing the tickets, Carlson saved the string of text messages between she and the seller, as well as photos of the identification she had been shown. Looking back through the texts, one in particular stood out: “You’ve got to be careful, there’s scammers out there,” the seller had warned Carlson.
“She snowed me so good. It’s brutal,” Carlson said. “I’m glad I found out now and not walking up to the door like a lot of people have. … I’ll never buy (tickets) on Craigslist again.”
Montague said police get reports of fraudulent tickets after every major concert in the city. The bigger the event, the more people fall victim to ticket scams perpetrated through websites like Craigslist and Kijiji.
“The only way to guarantee that when you show up at the door, you’re going to get in, is to buy tickets from a legitimate retailer,” Montague said.
Police are asking anyone who believes they may be victims of this scam to call investigators at 604-717-9858.
The vehicles involved in the deals are described as a grey BMW, a brown Hyundai Elantra and a blue Honda Civic.