Fans of the Detroit Lions should not let their excitement over the team’s first home playoff game in over 30 years blind them to the possibility of being taken advantage of by a ticket scammer.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel advises individuals looking for tickets to the North Division champions’ game against the Los Angeles Rams at Ford Field on Sunday to take the necessary steps to avoid online scams.
Tickets for the Lions’ Wild Card game at Ford Field are selling for thousands of dollars on retail sites such as Ticketmaster, according to Nessel in a news release. However, she advises Lions fans to be cautious while seeking for tickets on the internet and to be wary of scammers who aim to benefit from the local team’s popularity.
“Online ticket sales come with a certain amount of risk,” Nessel stated in the release. “It’s simple for scammers to create a bogus screenshot of a ticket that doesn’t exist or has already been sold — possibly multiple times.” If you’re planning on attending this weekend’s playoff game at Ford Field, make sure the tickets you buy are genuine and will allow you into the game. Only then will you be able to maintain your zeal while defending the den.”
Con artists have various methods for defrauding ticket purchasers and vendors. Payment or money app scams and bogus check scams are two of these methods.
According to Nessel, payment app frauds use peer-to-peer (P2P) money apps such as Apple Pay, Cash App, Circle Pay, Facebook Payments, Google Pay, PayPal, Square Cash, PopMoney, Zelle, and Venmo. P2P frauds come in various forms, she says, and every transaction with someone you don’t know requires extra caution.
Scams to be aware of when using a pay app, Nessel advises, include:
- Scammers impersonating your bank may call to alert you about “suspicious activity” on your account and direct you to send money to yourself or “the bank’s address” to reverse a transaction or to verify the account is not frozen. Your bank will never tell you to send money to anyone, not even yourself.
- Someone claiming to represent a fraud department or merchant can ask you to confirm information such as your bank account username and password, credit-card or debit-card data, or Social Security number. Do not share this information as scammers want to create a P2P account with your information, steal your identity and gain access to your accounts.
- Fraudsters sending spoofed emails warning that an account is about to be suspended and the account holder must enter their password on a spoofed webpage. Generally, payment app vendors will never ask you to enter your password unless you are on the login page.
Nessel offers additional tips when buying tickets online:
- Know your vendor — Make sure you are buying from a reputable website, especially before providing any personal financial information. Anyone can set up a “spoof” website with a web address that is similar to the legitimate ticket seller’s address. Aside from potential licensing and trademark violations, “spoof” websites may offer consumers overpriced or counterfeit tickets and expose the consumer to identity theft.
- Do your research – If you are unfamiliar with a particular ticket vendor, you can call the Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Team at 877-765-8388 and ask if there are any complaints on file regarding that seller. Remember, however, that the absence of filed complaints does not guarantee a seller’s legitimacy; it simply means officials have not received any complaints concerning the vendor. As an additional resource, try researching the ticket seller on the Better Business Bureau’s national website.
- Use credit — If you purchase tickets online, especially via an online auction site, it is recommended you complete your transaction using a credit card. That often provides protections that you would not otherwise have if you purchased the tickets using cash, check or money apps. Try to choose sellers with long histories of satisfied customers, and make sure the online bid amount is listed in American dollars.
- Shop securely — If a website begins with “https,” the “s” indicates the website is “secure.” Typically, the “s” will not appear in the web address until you access the order page of the site where you are asked to enter your personal information. Another indicator of a secure website is a graphic of a closed lock located at the bottom of your screen.
- If you try to sell legitimate tickets online, scammers may use the fake check scam to steal your money. Under that scam, a potential buyer makes an offer and sends a check — perhaps even a cashier’s check — for considerably more than the cost of the tickets and pretends it’s an error, according to the attorney general. They ask the seller to deposit the check and refund them the difference. But the check is counterfeit, and the seller is scammed out of their money plus any other funds from the fake check, as well as bank fees. Banks do not assume those losses.
