Suburban Chicago woman's Ticketmaster tickets stolen by hackers — and she's not alone
OSWEGO, Ill. (CBS) -- Anyone who recently bought tickets through Ticketmaster might want to pay attention here—as customers across the country sound the alarm about a new scam.
This scam involves customers' purchased tickets disappearing before they could even be used—and landing in the hands of scammers.
Ingrid Villanueva of Oswego was a victim of the scam. She was all ready for the experience of a lifetime—going to see the South Korean boy band Seventeen in concert for the first time.
But the K-pop fan never got to go. She said she was swindled out of the opportunity after tickets she bought on Ticketmaster for her and friends suddenly vanished.
"I got a notification, 'Someone transferred tickets to their account,'" Villanueva said, "and I like, this was suspicious. it says, like, Ggg, and I was like, I don't know anyone with that name."
Villanueva called Ticketmaster, and as the company looked into it, so did she.
"I was just trying to contact every single thing, like going on TikTok, seeing if this happened to other people, going on Twitter," she said.
What Villanueva found was that she wasn't the only victim. The apparent scam where hackers log into Ticketmaster accounts and transfer tickets is something CBS News stations across the country have been covering.
Because of the scam, Emily Kyser of Chesterfield County, Virginia, was robbed of seeing Taylor Swift live for the second leg of her Eras tour—also by a scammer that made the unusual name of "G."
"I was going through disbelief," said Kyser.
In Philadelphia, Lisa Bell lost hundreds of dollars when her tickets to watch an Eagles game with her daughter were swiped.
"I probably will never order off of Ticketmaster ever again," said Bell.
A growing thread on Reddit offers a glimpse on how many victims are out there—and many of them have the same question…
"If it could be transferred to somebody else like a hacker, I just don't understand why it couldn't be transferred back to me," said Villanueva.
CBS News Chicago reached out to Ticketmaster. The company said it was looking into Villanueva's case and said they would be in contact with her.
Ticketmaster released this statement:
"Overall, our digital ticketing innovations have greatly reduced fraud compared to the days of paper tickets and duplicated PDFs. Having that digital history is also how we are able to investigate the situation and restore fans' tickets. The top way fans can protect themselves is setting a strong unique password for all accounts – especially for their personal email which is where we often see security issues originate. Scammers are looking for new cheats across every industry, and tickets will always be a target because they are valuable, so Ticketmaster is constantly investing in new security enhancements to safeguard fans."
The scam itself is the apparent result of hackers getting a hold of email accounts. Ticketmaster is now urging customers to log into their Ticketmaster profiles and change their passwords.
While Villanueva waits for a refund, she is contemplating whether she will ever use Ticketmaster again.
"That trust that I had with them is just gone," she said.
Villanueva later reported that four of the five missing tickets magically reappeared in her account after CBS News Chicago started asking.
She herself never heard from Ticketmaster, so it was not clear why the tickets reappeared—or what happened to the fifth ticket.