Police warn of counterfeit World Series tickets

 

Courtesy Jackson County.

Courtesy Jackson County.

As fans frantically look for tickets to the World Series, the Kansas City police are warning them to be careful.

They’ve already seen counterfeit tickets for the postseason games, and they say scammers are certainly selling tickets to the World Series games that start Tuesday.

“For a big event like this, the scammers and scalpers will come out,” said Sergeant Rob Rickett, Fraud Section supervisor. “They always do.”

Here’s more from the police department:

With tickets sold out from primary sources like Major League Baseball, fans are turning to the secondary market, where security measures start falling away. Police advise buyers to use reputable brokers to purchase secondary market tickets. These services should offer a refund if the tickets turn out to be counterfeit.

Although it is legal to resell event tickets for more than their face value in the state of Missouri, police advise against trying to purchase tickets from someone in the parking lot of the stadium. If you are buying tickets on the secondary market, purchase them only from someone trustworthy or from a reputable broker.

Preventing counterfeit tickets has become much more difficult than it was when the Royals went to the World Series in 1985. Online sellers can hawk fake tickets to many more victims than could be done in person, and the ability to print tickets off at home further reduces safeguards. The only place to confirm whether a ticket is authentic is at the stadium gate.

Kansas City Police are proactively working to stop illegal ticket sales by checking secondary market web sites and conducting other enforcement. But they ask fans to use common sense. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

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