July 17, 2006
University of Notre Dame director of athletic ticketing Josh Berlo warns Irish fans to be extremely careful when they consider obtaining Notre Dame football tickets through non-University sources.
“We have received numerous recent reports of fraudulent ticket offerings and scams,” Berlo says.
“Based on the record level of demand for this season, con artists are leveraging it to trick people into paying for, or putting deposits on tickets they do not have.
“How do you spot a scam? Is it too good to be true? Were you solicited via a SPAM email or online blog or chat room? Does it involve a wire transfer or money order? Does it involve a foreign country? Is it on an Internet auction Web site? If you answered yes to any of those questions, chances are it is a scam or may involve invalid or stolen tickets.”
The Notre Dame ticket office actively monitors and enforces the ticket resale policy (link: http://und.cstv.com/tickets/tickets-resale.html) in an effort to curb resale for profit and ticket fraud. More than 1,700 tickets have been suspended or revoked in the past three years. Enforcement methods include active monitoring of more than 20 Internet ticket resale Web sites, periodic purchasing of tickets from these entities, undercover game day operations, as well as follow-up on all leads provided to the ticket office. Suspected resale violation information can be sent to: seller1@nd.edu.
Those suspecting they have counterfeit tickets in their possession should contact their local law enforcement agency to report this as soon as possible. The investigating law enforcement agency then can contact the Notre Dame Counterfeit Ticket Task force via the Notre Dame Security Police for assistance by calling 574-631-5555.
Clues to counterfeit tickets include fuzzy printing, rough cuts or perforations, mismatched fonts or the absence of an interlocking “ND” three-dimensional hologram. Be sure to review the front and back of the ticket for anything that looks irregular.
The University announced last month that it received a record number of requests for tickets for 2006 home football games through the Notre Dame alumni ticket lottery. Two home games – Sept. 9 vs. Penn State and Sept. 16 vs. Michigan – qualified as the two highest-requested games in the history of the lottery. Four ’06 games ranked among the all-time top 10 games for requests. More than $11.7 million in refunds will go to unsuccessful lottery participants (compared to $5.2 million a year ago) – after the lottery experienced a 37 percent increase in overall applications compared to 2005.
If you have any questions, please contact the Notre Dame Ticket Office at 574-631-7356 or visit us at www.und.com.