Thousands of Swifties were packed inside Ford Field on Friday for one of Taylor Swift’s two concerts in Detroit this weekend.
Not among them, though, were four teenagers from Berkley who fell victim to a ticket scam costing them $1,200.
“This is the first time I haven’t been able to get tickets to a concert,” said Lisa Turner, one girl’s mother.
Turner went to Craigslist and found four tickets to Taylor Swift’s Friday, June 9, show at Ford Field. They were priced at $300 a piece.
“[The seller] had a big story about why he wasn’t able to use the tickets, and wanted them to get in the hands of fans,” Turner said.
The seller sent her the first ticket before Turner sent the payment.
“I thought that I was then preventing the scams that I heard about,” Turner said.
The seller transferred four tickets to Turner’s Apple Wallet for $1,200. The teens were ecstatic when their parents told them they were going to Friday’s concert.
Then came the tears.
“There was crying when we found out we got them, and then crying when we found out we didn’t have them,” one of the girls said.
Turner felt something was off and took the tickets to the Ford Field box office Thursday for verification.
“They actually took the phone back and had to look it up on their computer system, brought supervisors in, and said they were some of the best tickets they’d ever seen, but they were fake,” Turner said.
Turner filed a police report and made a claim with Venmo and her bank. In the end, it was the girls that lost the most -- and they’re on the hook for the money.
“Now it’s like very, very disappointing that we have to work for all this money that we didn’t get anything for,” one of the girls said.
