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Richard Russell, a Scottish man, has spoken of his distress after his identity was stolen by a fake Premier League football ticket website claiming to sell tickets for top football matches. Ticket Maestro opened in July with the claim of selling tickets for top football games, but the website disappeared after three months, leaving angry fans who paid hundreds of pounds for tickets they never received. The scandal was exposed by a UK radio programme investigating the case. BBC Radio Four’s You and Yours programme found that Ticket Maestro named Richard Russell on official documents as the boss of the online ticketing site without his knowledge.
Richard Russell admitted that his family address, near Stirling, is now being published online and that disappointed fans are threatening to turn up to get their money back. Ticket Maestro claimed to be a “Trusted and Licensed Ticketing Partner” on their website. However, an investigation by the BBC found that the company was not licensed to sell Premier League tickets, and doing so unauthorised is illegal. Richard Russell’s name was used to sign off all correspondence, including order confirmation letters and customer service emails. In bank statements, a limited company, UCL Tickets Ltd, was named, with an individual called “Richard Rutherford Russell” listed as director on Companies House.
The BBC tracked down Mr Russell based on this information held at Companies House. Mr Russell was astonished to discover his identity was being used as director of UCL Tickets Ltd. He was a victim of identity theft and explained that the address documented in Companies House records is actually his parents’ home in Callander, near Stirling and he has never had anything to do with football. After receiving a letter from Companies House, Mr Russell began trying to remove his name and sent details proving that his parent’s address in the UK had nothing to do with Ticket Maestro and that he has nothing to do with it. Trustpilot has removed hundreds of reviews from Ticket Maestro’s profile, closed it to new reviews, and placed a warning banner on the profile, telling consumers about the case.
The fraudulent website managed to defraud fans out of a lot of money. Online payment system PayPal has received hundreds of refund claims from people who bought tickets from the website, and the company offers Buyer Protection, which covers purchases that don’t arrive or don’t match the seller’s description. The BBC reached out to Ticket Maestro using the email address it had used to communicate with customers, but it bounced back as there was no phone number associated with the website. Leicestershire Police have launched an investigation, and a 30-year-old woman has been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud
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