Broncos Fan Who Bought Fake Tickets: 'The $$ Is Gone'

DENVER (CBS4) - The Denver Broncos warned about it heading into their weekend game, but some fans still fell victim on Sunday to scammers selling fake tickets.

The team warned that such scams are getting more elaborate, and some fans had to learn their lessons the hard way.

"Looking back on it, it was really unrealistic," said one woman who came to the Broncos stadium Sunday evening with two friends thinking she was going to be attending the Denver-New York game.

The trio never made it through the Mile High gates because the tickets they bought from someone who had advertised them on Craigslist weren't real.

A similar thing happened to a woman named Donna George, who also sought out tickets to the game on Craigslist but then wound up falling for a scam.

"We are not going to get the money back. It's gone. The money is gone. It's just a lesson," George said.

The group George was with bought tickets from a man they thought was a season ticket holder, and the steps they took to get the tickets had them convinced they were getting the real thing.

"You make an account, and that's the only way you can get your ticket, and it looks legitimate. It looks exactly look like what we've used in the past," George said.

Things seemed good, until it was time for the delivery. They thought the seller was set to meet them at a designated meeting point, but the seller sent a taxi driver in his place.

"He was like 'I will let him know that you're here and that you have the money and I'll have him send you the tickets,'" said one of George's friends. "So I was on my phone, I received the tickets so we paid him the cash."

The tickets weren't real.

The main message the team wants to get out is that buyers should beware of possibly counterfeit tickets sold through secondary ticket sites.

"If it seems to good to be true, it probably is," said the woman who spoke with CBS4 who came with her two friends.

The team, and the police, say if you want to be certain your tickets are real, buy them on an NFL-associated website: Ticketmaster or NFL Exchange. They also recommend buying tickets at the ticket office of the stadium.