Was looking at craigslist for tickets to The Weeknd and Gucci Mane this weekend. Found a poster offering (3) floor seats for $150/ea about an hour before the show (face value.) I sent him a text offering him $300 for all (3). He called me right away and tried to negotiate for the $450 amount but I held my ground. He said he needed to check with the friends that owned the other tickets first and would get back to me.
About 10 minutes later he called back and said they all agreed it was better to get something for the tickets rather than nothing. He also said he was about 90 minutes outside of town so he would need to start driving pretty soon in order to meet me before the show. Here's the crazy part: it was actually my idea to do the transaction electronically rather than meet up. He was super appreciative of the idea and said he could transfer them directly through his ticketmaster account so that I knew they weren't counterfeit.
I've probably conducted hundreds of similar online and craigslist transactions and have never been scammed. I have a lot of faith that most people are good, and especially after chatting with this guy for a few minutes I didn't detect anything out of the ordinary at all.
I transferred him money through Zelle (I used Wells Fargo, he used Bank of America.) He gave me his name, email address and phone number. He said this was the service he was most comfortable with. Since I had used it before (and he gave me all the details) I wasn't that concerned with it. The transfer went through. He called me about 5 minutes later to confirm he received the money and said he was logging into ticketmaster and I'd have the tickets in the next 5 minutes..... I didn't receive them and called him back, he answered right away and said he had initiated the transfer and it might just take a few minutes?
Of course, I never received anything. He disappeared. Phone off, no responses to email, nothing. Name is generic enough that even if it is real (I doubt it) I haven't been able to find him on Facebook. Email doesn't come back with any social media results (although I sent him a tracking link that he opened the next day.) Phone number seems equally fruitless.
I opened a dispute and fraud investigation with my bank. I'm not holding out much hope but you never know what might happen. I don't even know if it's worth filing a police report?
tl;dr: I got ripped off by a total pro. So..... tips on how I could have prevented this: checked his name/number/email address on facebook before sending him any money. Ask him for a valid eBay sellers account. Pay via credit card through venmo or PayPal (even if it included an extra fee) -- not trust people on the internet!
Submitted September 26, 2017 at 11:47AM by FFFrank http://ift.tt/2xJmAW3
