Woman who stole World Cup tickets to pay for wedding
ADECEITFUL bride stole FIFA tickets to the Brazil 2014 World Cup final and then tried to sell them to help finance her wedding.
Arzoo Tariq, 25, worked for events company Byrom Plc in Cheadle, where it was her job to invalidate tickets for the soccer showpiece returned by football federations from across the globe.
The tickets should then have been reissued, but she kept 50 invalidated ones for herself, including 12 for the Germany v Argentina final at the famous Maracana Stadium in Rio.
Even though the 12 finals tickets were then useless, Tariq, of Ashdale Drive, Heald Green, ‘sold’ them on her eBay account for a total of £12,000.
However, she never received the money because, unknown to her, there were transaction checks on the website.
She was also found with a spreadsheet of stolen credit card details from Byrom customers, which she had used to buy items including TVs, clothes and jewellery worth £5,000.
At Minshull Street Crown Court, Tariq was given a 16-month suspended jail sentence and 240 hours of unpaid work.
She had admitted theft and five counts of fraud at a previous hearing.
It was said her victims, who were from Brazil, were not left out of pocket from buying tickets but it is unknown whether they forked out to travel on the basis of having them.
In sentencing, Judge Angela Nield said Tariq would have been jailed were it definitely proved she had cost people money.
She was found out in August last year when another worker at Byrom, on Brooks Drive, found an email with customer details on that should have been deleted.
A search of all staff laptops then unravelled her scams. Rather than handing over returned tickets to her boss, Tariq had kept them.
When one person queried the authenticity of tickets she created a fake invoice with a logo of football’s world governing body FIFA. The money was to be used to help her parents pay a dowry for her wedding, which has since taken place.
Defending, Joseph Ganner said Tariq had mental health disorders and had co-operated with police.
He added: “She has had a great deal of unhappiness in her life.”