Counterfeiters helped by better printers and scanners
December 2, 2009 by Sam NarisiPosted in: Latest News & Views
This week’s matchup of the nation’s top two two college football teams, Alabama and Florida, has generated a lot of excitement, as the game has become a virtual national championship. At the same time, there’s a struggle going on behind the scenes between stadium officials and ticket counterfeiters.
The game will be held at the 71,000 Georgia Dome in Atlanta, and the tickets were all sold out as soon as they became available. Scalpers are getting up to $5,000 a seat, so forget the recession.
Such high prices make counterfeiting more profitable than usual, and the counterfeiters, thanks to up-to-date scanning and printing technologies keep getting better.
Two years ago, there were almost no counterfeit tickets for the SEC championship. Last year there were 500 fakes. This year, the number could be thousands.
Authorities have escalated their defenses, with imprinted holograms on the tickets and a set of scanning devices at every entrance to the stadium to catch fakes. They are also providing a “ticket validation window” which will allow scalpers and especially their customers to test the validity of a ticket before the cash is handed over.
But in spite of the precautions, improving technology and increasing skill are allowing ticket forgers to keep a step a head of the authorities. And it’s not just the Alabama-Florida game. Authorities from Ohio State, the University of Oregon, the Rose Bowl and the NFL’s Pittsburgh Steelers have issued counterfeiting warnings over the past week. Scams are spreading worldwide, plaguing everything from rock concerts and the World Cup soccer games.
The solution? According to some experts, we will soon see tickets to sports events sold like airline tickets, where you reserve a seat, walk up to a machine on game day, pass a credit card, and have the ticket printed on the spot. A side benefit –- it might also kill the scalper industry.
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Tags: counterfeit, SEC, tickets
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