Craigslist Ticket Scam

I have never used craigslist before and after this I doubt I ever will. I was browsing the internet for some tickets to Chelsea’s last game of the season against Sunderland for 24th May 2015 when the trophy would be lifted.

I got in contact with one guy who was selling two tickets in the Shed End for £100 each on craigslist who seemed genuine. I had another browse on there and there was somebody selling 3 tickets at £40 each. Curious, I contacted him and when he told me they were still available I politely told the first seller I was no longer interested. The link to his post could have been found here with the ID 5008992501, however it’s now been flagged for removal so will no longer show up.

He claimed his name was Yus Andvari and lived in Manchester. That’s not too far from me so we discussed meeting up, he seemed fine with it, offered to go for a coffee and do the exchange. A little while later though he said if I was interested he could post the tickets on his way home and being excited I agreed. After all, we’d been on the verge of meeting so it seemed genuine to both me and the people around me.

I read through some scam sites that said if they ask to do bank transfers to overseas accounts then don’t do it, don’t trust them if there are lots of spelling mistakes and if their English isn’t very good. None of these were present here, it seemed very genuine. It wasn’t.

I transferred the money via PayPal to the e-mail he gave me, yus.andvari1@gmail.com, thinking that’d I’d be covered by them if anything did go wrong. Yus politely asked me to transfer the money through the friends and family option as the goods and services option can take up to 21 days and the match would be over by then. I didn’t give it a second thought and completed the payment.

Later that evening he said he still hadn’t received it but the following morning e-mailed me again to say it was his fault he hadn’t verified his PayPal account. I figured at this point that if it was a scam, why e-mail me after he has my money? So I asked him to post the tickets and got no reply. Over the next two days I sent e-mails and got no reply. Then it was obvious that I had been scammed.

Tell Everybody

I filled out a report with ActionFraud with all the details I knew. I then called PayPal and after talking to three different people was told that there was nothing they could do and couldn’t open a dispute as it was done voluntarily through friends and family rather than goods and services. Obvious, now, why he’d asked me to do it that way. PayPal did tell me though that they would e-mail me explaining they could not give me a refund and my bank should be able to issue a charge back if they know PayPal cannot. I called my bank but their disputes department was closed at the time.

So I called in the morning. They said that since the match isn’t till 24th May then the seller could still send the tickets. Therefore I would have to wait 19 days from my initial payment till the 25th May and ring back to open a case which could take 7-10 working days to investigate and lead to a potential refund. So now I just wait, waiting for tickets I know will never arrive.

I decided to make myself busy and contact other people to get the word out and try and stop anybody else from buying from this scammer. I googled both his name and his e-mail address but neither returned anything in Google. They could be false, after all. Hopefully this article will pop up should anybody else search for him.

Contacting Chelsea FC

I contacted Chelsea FC through their website letting them know that somebody is scamming their fans out of tickets. He sent a photo of one of the tickets to me so I told Chelsea FC the row and seat he was offering.

They took my e-mail very seriously and promptly got back to me. On the day of the match, they replicated the ticket and scanned it in the system. Therefore if he, or the real owner of the ticket, turned up to the match it would show up as a duplicate and he would need to go to the box office where they were waiting.

The day after the match they e-mailed me to say that nobody had turned up to the match with that ticket. Making the most likely scenario that he purchased the ticket with no intention of going and just sold the ticket several times.

It was very nice of them to keep me in the loop and to try and do something about it but unfortunately they weren’t able to provide any further information in the end.

Contacting Craigslist

I also e-mailed craigslist telling them that this was indeed a scam post along with all the evidence I had. They never responded to me directly but the post was taken down, whether that was due to me or not I have no idea.

Sting Operation

I then contacted him through my girlfriend’s e-mail address to see if he would reply. He eventually did saying that yes the tickets were still available. We went through the usual process and he fed me the same lines as he did before, saying he was in Manchester. I said I could meet him tomorrow but funnily enough he was going away so couldn’t. He said he could tonight so I said I would drive down now if he gave me his address. Then he never replied till late in the evening, too late to make the trip. How inconvenient.

This time though he offered me a bank transfer rather than his PayPal account. He said the account belonged to a Miss A Rrukaj, his girlfriend, but whether it is or not I don’t know. It was a Santander account so I rang them, got put through to their fraud department and explained what had happened. I gave them the account holder’s name, sort code and account number. They said that somebody would look into it immediately to see if he had in fact got other transfers to that account mentioning tickets or the like. They didn’t take my details so I’m unsure if they found anything but I’d like to think they’re taking it seriously. I also updated my ActionFraud report with the new bank details I had been given.

In The End

I called my bank after the match and got the investigation process going straight away. The following week they called me to take some further details and a couple of days after that they texted me to say the full amount had been put back into my account. The text also said that he has 45 days to respond to the charge but there is no way that he’s going to try and counter it and shed light on what he’s done.

So I have my money back from him, it’s all resolved. It took about a month, I feel stupid and I didn’t get to go to the big match but overall happy it got sorted in the end.

Being a web designer this inspired me to create a site where people can post their stories about being scammed in the hope that it can stop somebody else from being caught in the same trap. Thus ScamStories was born. I’ve posted this story on there and hope others will post theirs too.

My Advice

If you’re in a similar situation all I can suggest is to act quickly and call your bank. Then contact anybody that might be interested like the venue, the football club or whoever and get the word out there. Also file a fraud report. I never heard back from ActionFraud but they no doubt get lots of reports every day and it certainly doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. If you’ve been caught then it means somebody else probably has too and the only way it’ll end is if you tell somebody about it.