One Michigan family is out $2,000 and are about to miss the opportunity of a lifetime after their NFL tickets were stolen from their Ticketmaster account.
According to WZZM 13, an ABC affiliate news station in Michigan, a diehard football family had purchased tickets to the Chicago Bears v. Minnesota Vikings game in Chicago on November 24. Terah Howell’s husband had purchased the tickets for her and their son, which would have marked her first NFL game.
However, their dreams were suddenly shattered when Howell said the three tickets they purchased via Ticketmaster had disappeared from their account and transferred to a stranger. After checking the site two days later, their exact seats were available for sale under “verified resale.”
While Howell said she contacted Ticketmaster multiple times, there has been no resolution. The ticketer said the family would hear news by Wednesday night, though the issue was still not resolved.
Howell said she was looking forward to the game not only as a football fan, but as a superfan of Vikings Wide Receiver Justin Jefferson, as she was raised as a Vikings fan since she was a child.
“If Justin Jefferson, for some reason, like, doesn’t play after this season, and I don’t get to go to this game, like, it’s something that’s not replaceable,” Howell told the publication.
The Howell family is not alone; concertgoers and sports fans have complained over the past few months that their tickets have disappeared from their Ticketmaster accounts.
| READ: Dozens of Fans See Tickets Stolen From Ticketmaster Accounts |
One family from Gig Harbor, Washington told the local news outlet KIRO 7 they are out more than $1,200 for 14 tickets. Virginia Lasky told the publication that she was getting ready for work when multiple emails from Ticketmaster suddenly came in — notifying her that her tickets to upcoming shows and musicals were transferred from her Ticketmaster account to someone else.
“When I clicked on the tickets, they had one-by-one all been transferred and claimed,” Lasky said, noting that they were transferred to a total stranger’s account.
The same situation happened to a Lancaster, Pennsylvania woman, whose Pink concert tickets were transferred without her permission. Amanda Shaffer explained to WGAL News 8 that she had received the tickets back in December as a Christmas gift from her husband.
“And then this morning when I woke up is when I saw an email saying, ‘Hey, your transfer to this person was successful,’” Shaffer said. “And I was like, ‘Wait. I’m sorry. What?’”
The tickets were reportedly transferred to “bdbddh” and when she looked for her exact seats on Ticketmaster, she saw they were being resold under “verified resale.”
Hundreds of other fans have taken to social media to share their experiences.
These instances of Ticketmaster account hacks follow a massive data breach earlier this year. The “hacker” group ShinyHunters claimed it cracked the Ticketmaster system and accessed some 1.3 terabytes of data, which includes names, addresses, credit card numbers, phone numbers, and payment details, involving 560 million customers globally. The information was said to be up for sale on the dark web, with an asking price of $500,000.
The breach led to a class action lawsuit, which alleges Live Nation and Ticketmaster failed to implement “adequate and reasonable” cybersecurity procedures and protocols, enabling an “unauthorized third party to gain access to and obtain former and current Ticketmaster customers’ private information from Ticketmaster’s internal computer systems.”
While more than half a billion user accounts were reportedly affected in the breach, Ticketmaster said that user’s passwords were not exposed in the incident, telling KIRO 7 that “the vast majority of what we’re seeing is because scammers have accessed a fan’s email account.”
