Fraudster conned music fans out of £3,000 for fake concert tickets
They were promised tickets to see some of the biggest live acts in the world including Rihanna and Take That, but concert-goers were left disappointed and out of pocket when they discovered they had been sold tickets that didn't exist.
The music fans fell victim to a ruse set up by conman Matthew Thompson who used websites such as Ebay and Gumtree to sell fake tickets to events, Wolverhampton Crown Court heard.
Thompson disguised his identity with pseudonyms and used photographs of the tickets which he had taken off the internet to help convince people he was genuine.
Mr Timothy Harrington, prosecuting, told the court that between October 2010 and July 2011 Thompson conned seven people out of nearly £3,000 in total.
He said the first victim had spotted tickets to a Take That show at Wembley Arena on the auction website Ebay in September 2010. Thompson was selling two tickets for £330. Mr Harrington said: "He invented a story as to why the tickets were going spare, and had given her his phone number."
Then in December, Thompson pretended to be a seller called Ben Adams who was selling VIP tickets to the same Take That show.
Mr Harrington said he used email addresses that matched his pseudonym to communicate with the buyer, and the victim transferred £825 for the tickets which she believed would be put in the post, but they never arrived.
In the same month Thompson sold another man tickets for more than £200. When he questioned why they had not turned up, Thompson started to send him 'unpleasant' text messages, the court was told. Between October 2010 and July 2011 he sold fake tickets to other eager fans.
He was caught after a police raid on his home in October 2011. Officers discovered a number of ledgers which had details of his pseudonyms.
Thompson pleaded guilty to seven counts of fraud by false representation at an earlier hearing. Some customers received a partial refund but due to his lack of assets Thompson was only ordered to pay back £1 under the Proceeds of Crime Act. Mr Gurdeep Garcha, defending, told the court the 33-year-old from Tudor Vale in Upper Gornal, had no previous convictions.
He said: "He would like me to publicly express how sorry he is for what he has done."
Judge John Warner jailed Thompson for 20 weeks, suspended for two years. He ordered him to complete 200 hours of unpaid work, and subjected him to a curfew for 16 weeks.
