MILTON, Del. - Delaware State Police is issuing a scam advisory for fake Sussex County concert tickets. That advisory is for upcoming events at different venues in Sussex.
Police say the scammers convinced people to buy fake tickets through telephone prompts and fake websites.
Police say scam artists come in waves, whether its posing as the IRS, or as non-profit organizations. Hudson Fields, Bottle and Cork, and Freeman Arts Pavilion were impacted by the scams.
Police do not know the total number of venues that are impacted or specific concerts that people bought fake tickets for.
"These venues are receiving calls the tickets were purchased through a separate website or an unknown link on social media, websites ... where these tickets might be a higher cost. What they're actually purchasing are fraudulent tickets," said Senior Corporal Jason Hatchell, the Delaware State Police Public Information Officer.
The best way to prevent this from happening to you is to visit official websites to purchase tickets.
"Make sure if you're on the official website there is a lock at the top of the URL code that it is secure, use payment methods like a credit card that you know you can track, don't wire any money, don't give anyone cash apps, they can access your bank accounts," said Hatchell.
He also said Freeman Arts Pavilion sends customers PDFs of their tickets, which can help you spot a fake.
"If you get a picture of a ticket or if you don't receive anything at all, you know you've been scammed. A lot of times they're getting these fake tickets so if they are not a PDF file they're not legit," said Hatchell.
Police say these scammers are hard to track down and difficult to prosecute. The punishment is case by case and depending on the value of the ticket, it can be a felony.
"Once you already transfer your money, they already have your money, it's hard to figure out through a fraudulent website to track them down, so we want to be proactive, get on the forefront of this, and minimize the number of victims," said Hatchell.
Police encourage anyone who was scammed to report it.
Freeman Arts Pavillion said in a statement “Our ticket policy at Freeman Arts Pavilion has been and continues to be all ticket sales are final, non-transferable, and non-refundable, and the resale of tickets is prohibited. While there are some third-party resellers that offer options to consumers, there are no official resellers of Freeman Arts Pavilion, and we remind and strongly encourage our patrons to only purchase tickets directly from our website, freemanarts.org.
Frequently, we see this occur when a consumer searches for performances via Google, Bing, etc. This is where it can become confusing as advertisements for these third-party sites may land ahead of our official website. We again encourage all patrons and potential ticket buyers to look for and identify the website using freemanarts.org.”