Irving, TX-based Landry’s Tickets is being accused of allegedly using a stolen credit card number to buy tickets from another broker, according to an alert sent out this week to members of the National Association of Ticket Brokers (NATB).
Fellow Texas broker Big Dog Tickets is claiming that Landry’s Tickets allegedly cheated them out of close to $1,000 worth of tickets, NBA playoff tickets for the Dallas Mavericks, and now the company’s owner, John Landry, is believed to be avoiding telephone calls and emails.
TicketNews tried to reach Landry for comment about the allegations, but he did not return messages.
“Brokers and consumers need to be warned,” broker Larry Melamed, owner of Big Dog Tickets, told TicketNews.
Melamed sent out the alert to other brokers yesterday, May 23, in hopes that word would spread quickly about the alleged fraud. His company was allegedly taken for more than $800 in Mavericks tickets by Landry’s Tickets, and he has subsequently heard from a half-dozen other brokers who allegedly experienced similar problems with Landry’s Tickets.
“We sell over 99 percent of our tickets to other brokers,” Melamed said, using exchanges such as TicketsNow, TicketNetwork and StubHub. “And, we have never been burned by a broker before.”
While not common, such fraud alerts are sent out to NATB members periodically, and some result in investigations by the group. The Landry’s Tickets Web site does not carry an NATB membership badge, nor does the company turn up in searches on the NATB Web site.
The following is text from Melamed’s alert:
We received 2 [purchase orders] from Landry’s Tickets on 4/25 for the Dallas Mavericks that night. They used the same credit card on both POs. Street address, zip code, and CVC all matched. Found out today that the credit card number they used was stolen.
They do not answer their phones, do not return voice mail messages, and do not reply to emails. One phone number on their website doesn’t even go to their company. Goes to another company.
Even left messages on John Landry’s cellphone and received no reply.
With more reliance on electronic commerce, the instances of such alleged fraud in the ticketing industry could rise, according to online fraud expert Alisdair Faulkner of the company ThreatMetrix.
“An increase in electronic ticketing and online ticket purchases, paired with more advanced online fraudsters, puts the ticket industry in a more precarious situation than ever before,” Faulkner wrote recently in a TicketNews Guest Commentary.
TicketNetwork is the parent company of TicketNews.
