CELEBRITY
“I wanted my son’s first gig to be memorable but ended up being scammed $650” – the money disappeared ,Taylor Swift’s concert disappeared.
Chaos ensued when the seller stopped responding to messages
A MOM who tried to nab tickets for her son’s dream first gig ended in tears after swindlers intervened.
Jayme Johnson, from Arizona, searched high and low to scoop a spot at Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour without success in April last year.
When the hacked Facebook user didn’t send the tickets, Jayme panicked and demanded a refundCredit: Jayme Johnson
But after a tip from a pal about a Facebook post, Jayme believed she wasn’t far away from bagging the tickets for the popstar’s Glendale concert.
“We are aware that these scams happen, so we’re looking at her profile pic with a baby,” Jayme told Fox 8.
“She seems so sweet. She has 450 friends. She was local.”
The Facebook page looked legit, and Jayme got in touch about snagging the two advertised tickets to see the pop juggernaut for $650.
“Wow, I’m going to get this experience with my son, his first concert,” she continued.
“This will be great.”
The seller asked Jayme to pay through cash transfer apps Venmo or Zelle.
She said: “I went ahead and I sent the money through and I knew with Zelle that it’s immediate.”
Curiously, the tickets never arrived, and Jayme repeatedly messaged the seller asking where they were.
‘I’m making the payment’, says teen who lost $10k in a week over Zelle after being told his family would be ‘chopped up’
When she didn’t receive any response, she demanded a refund.
“As soon as I said that they blocked me on Messenger, and they did the same to my friend, and we had no way of communicating,” she said.
The penny dropped, and Jayme knew that she’d been swindled by a hacked account.
“She had her account hacked,” Jayme revealed.
“Her mom had been posting on Facebook saying, ‘Hey guys, if you get a weird message or see posts from my daughter about Taylor Swift tickets, it’s a scam.
She seems so sweet. She has 450 friends. She was local
Jayme Johnson
“They had hacked in and were acting as her and scamming people.’”
“You always hear of these things and think I’m smarter than that and think that’ll never happen to me and well, it did.”
Zelle is a peer-to-peer payment app that allows people to send money to each other instantly.
It can be used through its own app or it is also connected to tons of major banks through their apps.
The two tricks were brought to light by Keep Security on “Is it safe to accept Zelle payments from strangers?” – and they have concluded that no it is not.