Craigslist scalper scams Madonna fans

Frank Luba, The ProvincePublished: Wednesday, November 05, 2008
A Port Coquitlam woman who paid a scalper $500 for a pair of tickets to last week's sold-out Madonna concert and got ripped off wants to warn other ticket-buyers.
Iris Piatka bought the tickets after she went with the seller to Ticketmaster to verify they were legitimate.
"I thought I had done my due diligence by going to Ticketmaster," Piatka, 44, said yesterday.
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Iris Piatka of Port Coquitlam says she's not sure who she can trust any more after she had tickets verified by Ticketmaster before she bought them.
Les Bazso, The Province
Piatka suspects that after she bought the tickets, the scalper must have called Ticketmaster and had them cancelled because, when she showed up on Thursday, she was told they were void.
The man that Piatka bought the tickets from, who gave his name as Kurt Holton, looks like he ran the scam more than once because on Monday an online group announced it is pursuing criminal and civil legal action against him.
There are 16 people in that group, which complained to Port Moody police.
There is only one K. Holton listed on Canada 411 but that Comox number isn't for Kurt. The woman who answered said she has been receiving calls from ripped-off concert-goers.
An individual named Kurt Holton went through a divorce in 1993 and has been in small claims court in Vancouver, Richmond, North Vancouver and Surrey between 1991 and 2003.
"I don't want to go around in life being paranoid and worried that someone's out to get me," said Piatka. "It almost feels now you have to be paranoid toward people, and think, 'OK, what do they really want?' I don't want to live my life like that.
"I was very upset when I found out. I felt like a complete fool."
Piatka had tried earlier to buy tickets through Ticketmaster but the B.C. Place concert sold out before she could get any as a birthday surprise for a friend.
She found plenty of tickets on the free Internet classified advertising site Craigslist in June and arranged to buy two from Holton.
She said another couple in line with her on Thursday were similarly scammed.
Piatka ended up shelling out another $225 for two "nose-bleed" tickets without much of a view of the Material Girl.
"I'm sure hundreds of people were ripped off on Thursday," said Piatka. "People are just too embarrassed to talk about it."
She wants to know how many other tickets were similarly void.
Ticketmaster spokesman Albert Lopez was surprised by the scam in which the ticket checks out as genuine, but is in fact void.
"This is the first time hearing of this," he said.
Lopez advised ticket buyers to go to Ticketmaster's own resale site, TicketsNow, or other legitimate ticket brokers, but not unauthorized sources.
"It's a classic example that the fans should beware and purchase through legitimate sources," he said.
Lopez would not do the research he said would be necessary to find out if other tickets were cancelled in the same scam that snared Piatka.
"Whoever perpetrated this needs to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law," he said.