The Day my Family and I got Scammed for Taylor Swift

It is currently 2:26 am when I'm typing this and I can't sleep. This experience is plaguing my mind, so I figured I would write about it, if not just to get it all out of my head. 

Disclaimer: don't be stupid like us... not even if it means your dreams may come true.

It all started the other night. I was scrolling through twitter, hoping to find someone who was selling 2 tickets to any of the shows at the Atlanta, Nashville, or Foxborough stops on Taylor Swifts The Eras Tour. Basically, just wishing for a miracle. I found someone selling two tickets to the first night of the Foxborough shows, and their tweet was posted less than five minutes ago. After looking at their account and confirming that they were seemingly a fan, I dmed them to see if the tickets were still available. They had lower bowl seats for 350 each. 

Now I will take this moment to share how it seemed as if the stars had aligned. It was the perfect amount of tickets, to one of the preferred locations, and they were also lower bowl, which is basically my perfect spot since my mom has health issues, and for me, with my anxiety, floor seats are most definitely a no-go. And also, for my fellow spiritual baddies out there, it was section 111. So, maybe you can imagine my disbelief at this point.

When she answered my dm, she sent me a screenshot and a screen-recording of the confirmation email sent by ticketmaster, when you buy tickets to an event. I know at this point it doesn't really help my case no matter how legit I say everything looked... but it really did look legit. And obviously, my parents agreed because they were willing to send the money. My parents wanted this for me as much as I did. 

After some technical issues, not really worth going into detail about, we decided to try sending the money in the morning. She was willing to hold on to the tickets for us, which I thanked her profusely for. My family and I discussed the possibility of and what we were going to do if it happened to be a scam.

My mom told me the next day that my stepdad looked at her twitter account for a long time that night, seeing that she had sold tickets before. After getting a hold of her again, we were finally able to send half of the money to her. We had agreed to send the first 350 over, so that she could transfer one ticket, then we'd send the other half, then she'd transfer the other. Then, she sent us what looked like a screenshot from ticketmaster support saying that you can't just send one ticket over to someone else, you either have to transfer 2 or more. In hindsight, that's when we should've stopped. We shoud've actually looked it up to see if that was actually true. But everything she said seemed totally legit. So we sent over the other half.. or at least attempted to. We ended up running into the same technical issues we had experienced the night before. My stepdad ended up on the phone with Apple trying to figure out what the problem was. He sent more money little by little advised by the team at Apple and long story short, had to reset all of his settings to troubleshoot the issue. Eventually, my mom sent the remaining money from her phone. At this point, we thought we were out of the woods. (Yes, I made a Taylor Swift pun, I'm gen z, I cope with humor). 

This is where we realize our mistake. She told us that she had sent the tickets to my moms ticketmaster account and sent us the screenshot of the confirmation email. I notice a statement in the email saying that the recipient will receive the tickets immediately after the transfer fee is paid. I asked her what that meant, and she sent multiple screenshots from ticketmaster saying that the tickets can't be sent without paying a transfer fee.. which is a whopping 400 dollars. At this point, my stepdad is googling. Mind you, we had been googling before and everything she had been saying before had checked out, until this. My stepdad ended up finding a page on ticketmaster saying that there is no transfer fee and you could actually see where the scammer had altered it if you held them up side by side. 

At this point it's taking everything in me not to cry, my mom had already given in to her tears. My stepdad called the bank and explained everything and they said that when the statement comes in he can try to dispute it, but the money was never the issue. My stepdad has a really good job and my mom is receiving a bonus next week and she already told us that she would give my stepdad his money back. I remember hearing my stepdad say to the bank after I'm assuming being asked if there was anything more they could do in the meantime and he said "no, not much. just trusted in human kindness and got screwed in the end". I responded with "story of my life". 

We reported the scammers twitter account, I also sent the account to my friends so they could report it. I took screenshots of the entire dm conversation with her all the way from the very beginning, so that will help us with the dispute. We're all pretty sure we can't get our money back. 

Even reliving this now makes me feel just as stupid as I felt in the moment. Although I will say that I am extremely lucky to have the parents I do. At no point at all did they ever show any signs of anger towards me. Like I said before, they wanted this for me just as much as I did, especially my mom. I also know that they believed what she was saying and thought that it was legit or else they wouldn't have tried as hard as they did. Especially my stepdad, who's quite literally, the smartest person I know. 

I don't think that writing this all out has made me feel any better, but I do know that I'm getting tired again so I might be able to sleep. I'm so glad that thanksgiving break is this week so I'll  only have to go to school depressed 2 days instead of 4. I hope you enjoyed my first blog post, hopefully you got a laugh or two. Again, don't be like us... please. 

good night

~ your friendly neighborhood bee