'Too good to be true': Ontario woman says she was scammed $800 after buying concert tickets on Facebook Marketplace

An Ontario woman tried surprising her husband with concert tickets for his birthday, but instead, she says she was scammed.

Rosanna said she and her husband are long-time fans of country music star Morgan Wallen, who is performing three shows in Toronto this coming September at the Budweiser Stage.

Tickets were really expensive on Ticketmaster, Rosanna told CTV News Toronto.

“They were going for like $500 for lawn tickets, and if you wanted to be inside, it was like $1,000 a ticket,” she said. Currently on Ticketmaster, the most expensive tickets for the Saturday night concert are going for about $1,180 each in the 200 section.

But, Rosanna said she saw someone on Facebook Marketplace was selling four tickets for $200 each in the 300 section.

“I’m pretty sure that was what they were going for initially, and then everyone’s reselling them for like double or triple the amount,” Rosanna said. “So, I was thinking, ‘Okay, maybe this is just somebody that wants to get rid of them.’”

In screenshots of the conversation reviewed by CTV News Toronto, the seller said they had tickets for section 304 for Sept. 16. They asked Rosanna for her email connected to her Ticketmaster account to send the tickets, and provided her the email address to e-transfer $800.

Rosanna noticed the name attached to the auto deposit did not match the name of who she was speaking with, but the seller confirmed it was the right email address.

After sending the money, the seller asked her to send a screenshot of the transfer confirming it went through, which rang alarm bells for Rosanna.

“I said, ‘Well, you should have got an email,’ and they go, ‘Send me a screenshot of the payment, that e-transfer belongs to my friend,’” Rosanna said. “Then I knew this started getting sketchy.”

The seller then told Rosanna they were “trying to send” the tickets, but that she needed to pay another $100 to activate her account so the transfer could go through.

“That’s not true,” Rosanna replied, and provided another email for the tickets to be sent to instead.

“Ok wait,” the seller wrote in response to Rosanna asking for the tickets.

Rosanna noticed they then deleted the ad and their account off Marketplace, but said she noticed the ad pop up again on the platform. 

“I went back to search for more (Morgan Wallen) tickets -- not that I was going to buy more -- but I just knew that if they had done this, they were going to do it again,” she said. “So, I went back on Facebook Marketplace, and I saw a new ad with the same ad picture and the same description.”

Through her husband’s Facebook account, Rosanna said they spoke with the new seller to see if it was the same individual, asking the same questions as before, and she said “their responses were all the same tone and manner” but it was a different email address for the e-transfer.

“(My husband) did it three times, and all three times, it was the same responses, but all three times it was a different Facebook account and a different email account,” Rosanna said, adding they deleted their account each time.

CTV News Toronto reached out to Meta, behind Facebook Marketplace, multiple times for comment but did not hear back in time for publication.

Rosanna said she immediately contacted her bank to see if she could cancel the transfer, knowing she had just been scammed. But since the e-transfer was automatically deposited, Rosanna said she was told there was no way she would get her $800 back.

While TD Bank could not provide details, a spokesperson confirmed Rosanna’s case had been reviewed.

“There would have been no opportunity for TD to have prevented the loss to the customer as they performed the activity and only realized it was a scam after the funds were sent and the seller blocked them,” Ashleigh Murphy of TD Bank said in a statement.

“It is (a) cautionary tale of ‘buyer beware’ when it comes to making any purchases from an online market with a new or unknown seller.”

HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM MERCHANDISE FRAUD

As of June 30, 2023, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC) confirmed it received 812 cases where 670 people fell victim to fraudulent ads on social media, including Facebook Marketplace.

Jeff Horncastle, acting client and communications outreach officer at CAFC, told CTV News Toronto in a statement that when purchasing something off someone online, it’s best to make the exchange in person.

“If a victim makes a purchase online, the CAFC always advises to use a payment mechanism that offers fraud protection (credit card),” Horncastle said. “Unfortunately, the chances of getting funds back is very unlikely if other payments are utilized.”

Locating and verifying the seller’s contact information before buying something online, looking through customer reviews from third-party sources, and reviewing the seller’s email information are some other ways CAFC recommends protecting oneself from merchandise fraud.

“I kind of knew it was too good to be true, and I feel embarrassed,” Rosanna said. “It can happen to anybody.”