Scam Interception: How an NYPD Detective Tackles NFL Ticket Fraud

(MUSIC INTRO)

[00:00:02] Bob: This week on The Perfect Scam.

[00:00:04] Mike McCaffrey: The National Football League reached out to the New York City Police Department and said, we have a problem. There appears that there's an individual that is preying on fans of the NFL. When these individuals try and go buy tickets, it seems too good to be true. They're spending a significant amount of money on incredible seats, and when these individuals get to the game, the tickets never come.

(MUSIC SEGUE)

[00:00:33] Bob: Welcome back to The Perfect Scam. I'm your host, Bob Sullivan.

(MUSIC SEGUE)

[00:00:39] Bob: There's nothing like sports to bring old friends together, or to give you and your family a once in a lifetime experience. But when there's a really big game and emotions run high, well things can go sideways, and I'm not talking about friendly rivalries here, I'm talking about scams, of course. When you're looking for that once in a lifetime experience, you certainly don't want that experience to be a crime. But high demand sports and entertainment events bring out criminals en masse. Well, it's a minefield out there. So today we have two stories about ticket scams for you. In a moment, we'll talk to a New York police detective who chases down a massive ticket scam after the NFL comes looking for help. Wait until you hear what the criminal spent the money on. But first, we meet a woman who was planning on an amazing double-header Philadelphia sports weekend with an old friend to see the Phillies play in the baseball playoffs on Tuesday, and her beloved Eagles play the Broncos the night before. And if you know anything about Philly fans...

[00:01:43] Hilarie Roth: Okay, my name is Hilarie Roth. I am mid-60s, divorced, female, two boys, well they're grown, they're men. I have three grandsons. I live in Belmont, Massachusetts, which is a little, just west of Cambridge, which is just west of Boston.

[00:01:59] Bob: And you are an Eagles fan.

[00:02:03] Hilarie Roth: I am avid Eagles fan. I grew up in Philadelphia, my grandfather had season tickets back when the Eagles played at the University of Pennsylvania stadium and...

[00:02:13] Bob: Oh wow.

[00:02:14] Hilarie Roth: Yeah, I started going to games when I was 4. It's how I learned all my curse words.

[00:02:18] Bob: (laughs)

[00:02:20] Hilarie Roth: Oh yeah, and then some.

[00:02:21] Bob: This is the Randall Cunningham era, right?

[00:02:23] Hilarie Roth: It, well actually I deep back to, to Sunny Jorgenson.

[00:02:27] Bob: No, that can't be.

[00:02:28] Hilarie Roth: It's true, yeah, remember I said I'm in my mid-60s, I lied, I'm more up there.

[00:02:34] Bob: (laughs) You know what, we're not counting here.

[00:02:38] Bob: Philadelphia fans in general are often regarded as the most, ahem, let's say passionate fans in America.

[00:02:49] Hilarie Roth: Um, I think we are. We get a bad rap. All it takes is a few bad eggs for any team, really, but for some reason we're hated on way more than other teams, although I think the Chiefs have surpassed us on that.

[00:03:04] Bob: You might have heard stories about Eagles fans pelting Santa with snowballs one year. Hilarie says she was at that game and everyone misunderstands. But anyway, suffice to say, Philly fans are passionate, especially Eagles fans, and especially this year as the Eagles are reigning Super Bowl champions. How hard is it to get Eagles tickets? Well Hilarie thought the waiting list for season tickets was 15 years long, but in fact, there is no waitlist anymore, so there's no hope of buying tickets the normal way, so unless you already have season tickets, you're buying on the secondary market. And one day this fall, well, the pressure is on for Hilarie to score some great tickets.

[00:03:48] Hilarie Roth: So I had been living in Los Angeles before I moved to Massachusetts and I had an avid from South Jersey friend who we watched every Eagles game together, and she, spur of the moment, said, "Hey, I've got a business trip. Why don't I come in? We'll stay in Center City. We'll go to the NLDS games," that's the Phillies were in the first round of the divisional playoff series, "And we'll," and it all converged on that same weekend. So October 6th was the, the Broncos game, and then the 7th we went to the Phillies game that night, and I was the one responsible for buying the tickets. So the Phillies, I had a Phillies Facebook group that I've been in for quite a few years, probably about three years now, and I do go down in the summer and I do Phillies games, because most of my extended family, my cousins, whatnot, they're more into the Phillies than they are into the Eagles. So I'm used to buying tickets from ticket season holders on that particular Facebook group page. And I had already gotten the Phillies tickets, but that was divisional. They were 500 a pop.

[00:05:07] Bob: Yeah, well what an amazing weekend this is shaping up to be really, yeah.

[00:05:10] Hilarie Roth: And I only had a week to do this.

[00:05:13] Bob: She only has a week to get these tickets, so she decides to go the same route for the Eagles that she went for the Phillies.

[00:05:20] Hilarie Roth: I was so confident, and like feeling so powerful that I'd gotten these amazing Phillies deals for tickets and had, had so much fun, and I'm thinking, okay, I can replicate that, why not? So I looked at, I started looking for Philadelphia Eagles ticketholders and ticket resellers Facebook pages. And there were a ton of them. There had to have been about a dozen of them. And then in, in terms of my thought process of picking, I figured if I zero in on like the two largest ones that have the most members, wouldn't it be safe? It's got to be safe, right?

[00:06:01] Bob: The group has nearly 20,000 members she recalls.

[00:06:05] Hilarie Roth: So the way the Phillies site does it is the season ticketholders go ahead and post and they also show their tickets with the lines crossed out through them and the bar codes sketched out and that kind of thing. But it's the actual ticketholders that are posting and the moderators and the administrators, have approved these ticketholders as being legitimate ticketholders, but then the ticketholders themselves go ahead and post on the Phillies site that I was on. So I, my back and forth was with season ticketholders and they were able to verify with me that they truly were by sending me their scratched-out tickets and, and it was, it just, I never even thought in all those years that anybody was bogus, and the administrators were really good about, and prided themselves on the fact that they got rid of bots and they got rid of scammers and the whole bit. The Eagles group page was different. The moderator and the admins, so there were four admins, maybe three admins, one moderator, the way they presented was that they represented the season ticketholders, so they were the go-between. And the season ticketholders were transferring their tickets into these admins' Ticketmaster accounts, and so they, it was almost like brokering, right? It was like brokering, so, so the season ticketholders wouldn't have to do anything. And they would be fully represented from start to finish on the Facebook group page.

[00:07:47] Bob: Only moderators can post on the page. The observers like Hilarie can comment on those posts, so generally a moderator would post that certain tickets were available and fans who want to buy them leave a comment. Sure enough, soon after Hilarie joined the group, a moderator posts about a block of four tickets in a great section. She comments, and she's told to reach out to the moderator selling the tickets named Vicki, in a private message. She writes:

[00:08:15] Hilarie Roth: Me: "Hi, Vicki, interested in Section 137, Broncos, 2 tickets. How much?" "$300 each for the Broncos game. Do you want them with a parking pass?" I said, "How much?" "We'll throw it in." "Okay, let me get back to you soon. This price is good, I'm just watching the weather," blah-blah-blah. And there were tropical storms that were going to be converging in the Philadelphia area.

[00:08:37] Bob: (laughs) Right.

[00:08:38] Hilarie Roth: We were not going to sit in a, like a gale. And so then I said, "Vicki, Section," this is like the next day, I think. Yes, it's not showing the next day, but I think it was the next day. "Vicki, Section 137, what row?" She said, "Row six." I said, "Awesome. Is that section covered? I'm assuming not." "No, it's not." "Okay darling, as long as you can provide proof of tickets, I'm ready to purchase two plus parking pass... Is where? I've got a disabled parking pass for my car." "Yes, just a sec." Sends me the screenshot with the scratched-out bar code of 137, Row 6, Section 1, or Seat 1. And I said, "Awesome, and what parking lot?" And she said, "Lot K." It's the best one. I said, "Perfect, okay. So I pay you through Ticketmaster or equivalent?" She said, "No, you make payment via Apple Pay, Chime, Zelle. Then I transfer them to your email through Ticketmaster."

[00:09:38] Bob: Well, as long as the tickets are coming through Ticketmaster, Hilarie figures it'll be okay. She's paid for tickets using Zelle before.

[00:09:47] Hilarie Roth: I said, "Okay, let's do Zelle. 300 each, no additional fees, correct? How do I find you?" And then Vicki says, "Is there any chance we can do Apple Pay?" I said, "I'm on an Android phone, I don't think so. I can do Venmo." "Should I send my Zelle details?" I said, "Please do." This is her saying, "Should I send my Zelle details?" "Please do." I go, oh, I said, "Okay, so they aren't your tickets, correct? Because you are moderator, you represent them?" She said, "Yeah, they're on my Ticketmaster already." And I said, "I see. Sorry. This process is new to me. I'm used to buying Phillies bank tickets from resellers through the MLB app," 'cause that's on my Phillies page. It's all done through the app, the MLB app.

[00:10:30] Bob: So Hilarie sends $600 via Zelle and waits.

[00:10:37] Hilarie Roth: And now it's waiting a few days for it to hit the Zelle account, and it was actually through a weekend. So it took four days. So the Zelle account hits, and I'm like, "Vicki, you promised me as soon as they would hit that you'd send the tickets." I don't hear anything.

[00:10:52] Bob: There is an unnerving delay, but eventually Vicki does pop into her messages with an explanation.

[00:10:59] Hilarie Roth: And then that night she messages me and says, "So Ticketmaster won't let me break up the block of four. Do you have anybody, you know, that you could invite to, to take the other two tickets?" And now I'm like, I'm tempted to call Ticketmaster and find out, can't you break up a block of four? This doesn't make any sense to me. And then I'm thinking, well I had some issues at some point breaking up a block of tickets, I don't know if it was Ticketmaster, and I couldn't send them individually, okay, this must be legit.

[00:11:32] Bob: But eventually Hilarie decides to talk her niece and her friend into coming along to the football game.

[00:11:38] Hilarie Roth: And meantime, Vicki offers me a "deal" of $250 per ticket for the inconvenience, so I Zelle another $500 on top of the 600 that I'd already sent.

[00:11:53] Bob: Days go by and still no tickets. Hilarie is starting to get nervous and she complains.

[00:12:00] Hilarie Roth: So I say, I'm going to go to Jack, another of the administrators, and 'cause I'm thinking, okay, this is a rogue moderator. And...

[00:12:08] Bob: Right.

[00:12:08] Hilarie Roth: ... so I go to Jack, the administrator, and he goes, "Oh yeah, I can sell you tickets."

[00:12:14] Bob: Can I sell you tickets, Hilarie thinks. I've already bought tickets. I just explained that. And then, well suddenly Hilarie sees things for what they are.

[00:12:25] Hilarie Roth: And then I'm like, ah... okay, because I had laid out very clearly that Vicki had not sent me tickets and had scammed me out of tickets, and now I'm, now it hit me over the head like a hammer, they're all in cahoots. This is one big scam.

[00:12:43] Bob: How big a scam?

[00:12:46] Hilarie Roth: So I went to another site that looked, or page, the group page that looked very similar to the one that Vicki and Jack had, and I saw the same tickets for the same games and I messaged her on Messenger, and I said, "What the heck is going on here, Vicki? I'm seeing the same tickets, the ones that I supposedly bought, you have my money, being advertised in a post that happened 12 hours ago on another Eagles page," and she said, "Oh yeah, they copy and paste." I'm like, ah... to the bitter end, Bob, this woman was not acknowledging that she had ripped me off.

[00:13:31] Bob: But you're still, you're in that in between place where maybe there's something going wrong, but I'm not 100% sure, and then you see that the tickets are for sale somewhere else, and that's another nail in the coffin, I'm sure.

[00:13:41] Hilarie Roth: Yes, correct.

[00:13:42] Bob: Yeah.

[00:13:42] Hilarie Roth: Correct.

[00:13:44] Bob: So now Hilarie doesn't know what to do.

[00:13:47] Hilarie Roth: I contacted my son. So I'm like, I think I've just been scammed, and I have a resource in my son. He's a senior fraud investigator of credit cards for a high-tech company. You would think I would use him before I would make any purchases whatsoever, Bob, but no, I did not. So...

[00:14:08] Bob: It happens all the time.

[00:14:08] Hilarie Roth: Yeah, so he investigated and he looked at the Facebook page and said, "Mom, this Facebook page was only started in August." And I'm like, "Oh." And he, he said, "Every administrator is, their IP address is from another country including Vicki's." So they've stolen the profiles from Facebook. They, they haven't just cloned and made another profile, they've actually stolen the profiles. So now I'm like, alright, this is a done deal. I'm not getting these tickets, it's not happening. I've just been royally scammed. So I called Bank of America. They put in a fraud report. And they are able to see, they told me, I'm on the phone with them, they're able to see that the recipient account for where my Zelle monies went is a Chase Bank account. So they then communicate with Chase, and this, it actually wrapped up, they did the final fraud report within 10 days of my filing the initial claim, but by the time anybody could do anything, that money was gone, and that money was probably gone within minutes of it hitting that bank account anyway. So Chase shut down the account, and but it doesn't matter because all these people have bogus names and bogus email addresses and all they do is invent new names and steal other people's profiles and email addresses, and open up another bank account with a Zelle.

[00:15:40] Bob: But they also tell you at that point, what's the chance of you getting your money back?

[00:15:44] Hilarie Roth: None, because Zelle does not have any, it's not like a credit card. Zelle is cash. Zelle is like handing cash to that person and having them disappear into the night.

[00:15:56] Bob: What does that feel like?

[00:15:57] Hilarie Roth: You feel violated. You, number one, you're, you know, you want to write L on your forehead with a Sharpie; you're a loser because you didn't see the signs. And number two, you're angry at these people that do this. And felt, yeah, I felt like I, I was robbed. I had been robbed. I felt like I was robbed, and, and I was really upset at myself because I don't consider myself one of those people that can get scammed, and I'm sure there's lots of people like me out there that say, oh, I'm too smart for this. And $1100, hey, I'm on a fixed income. I'm retired. I'm not retired super wealthy. I can do things like Eagles games and stuff, but 1100 bucks is 1100 bucks. We all know that could be put to very good use elsewhere. So the lack of the money in my bank account stung. The fact that I had been so manipulated was just it, it just made me question how I am interpreting things in life, and how I'm evaluating and how I'm reasoning. So I guess to sum that up, it shook me to the core.

[00:17:09] Bob: And the way some people react to her situation, well that shakes her too.

[00:17:14] Hilarie Roth: I actually posted this on my Philadelphia Eagles Fans of Boston Facebook group. We have a huge group; there's 2,000 of us.

[00:17:25] Bob: Yeah, sure.

[00:17:25] Hilarie Roth: And we're like talked about on WIP radio's, you know, out of Philadelphia all the time. We've had Eagles come up and visit us and really awesome, but I posted this, and I said, "Hey guys, I got scammed, I'm just going to do a quick explanation. If anybody wants to know more..." everybody was sympathetic except for these two guys who, we all know these types, right. The mansplaining guys who both commented, "Weren't you an idiot to get sucked into that." And that was, and that's the way I felt immediately upon that, and I had to tell my niece, right. And so I felt, I felt shrunken, I felt that I was a lesser person because I had fallen for this.

[00:18:11] Bob: But also, Hilarie has a much more immediate problem. She has a friend flying in to watch the Eagle's game with her and...

[00:18:20] Hilarie Roth: And I don't have tickets. Megan took that one over and bought tickets on TickPick, and no, we didn't sit in the lower section with tickets the way they like that had been presented to me. But we did end up first row of the second level with a great view of the field, and we had a blast. We had such a great time that weekend, and I just...

[00:18:45] Bob: Okay, I like Megan because she didn't complain, she just fixed the problem, right?

[00:18:49] Hilarie Roth: She did. She didn't complain.

[00:18:50] Bob: That's amazing.

[00:18:51] Hilarie Roth: She did not berate me. She knew that I was feeling bad enough.

[00:18:55] Bob: In fact, feeling worse than she let on at the moment.

[00:18:59] Hilarie Roth: I was also really sick with a bronchitis through the whole process, like really sick, running a fever...

[00:19:06] Bob: Oh, that seems important too. You're already under all this pressure, yeah.

[00:19:09] Hilarie Roth: Yeah, I was already really down for the count, and I probably wasn't thinking as straight as I could have been, and I also wanted it to just be over. I wanted to get it all done so that I could like go to sleep and try to shake the fever and get rid of the cough and...

[00:19:22] Bob: And you don't want to be sick for this amazing weekend.

[00:19:24] Hilarie Roth: Exactly. Exactly, and it was only a week away, and antibiotics hadn't worked by then and so yeah, that, I'm, I don't like using that as a copout, but I'm sure it affected my judgment at least a little bit.

[00:19:40] Bob: And she was so angry about the whole experience that after filling out all the normal forms with law enforcement, she tracked me down and sent me a personal email because she wanted to talk about her experience on The Perfect Scam. And we're so glad she did.

[00:19:57] Bob: Okay, important question, you did end up going to both an Eagles game and a Phillies playoff game that weekend. What happened in the games?

[00:20:05] Hilarie Roth: We did. Oh, the Eagles lost embarrassingly to the Broncos, and the Phillies lost, not only the game that we went to physically Monday night, but when we arrived in Philly on Saturday, we were able to go to this really cool bar in Center City and get a bite to eat and watch the Phillies game on the TVs there; they lost that night too, so it was a waterboarding of losing, Bob.

[00:20:30] Bob: Oh no! (laughs) But you still had a good time, right?

[00:20:34] Hilarie Roth: We had the best time, yeah. We ate good food, and we had Philly Cheesesteaks, and we just, we had such a great time.

[00:20:41] Bob: As you can see, Hilarie has a pretty good spirit about her even though her money was stolen and her beloved Eagles and Phillies both lost that weekend. But the problem of fake ticket sales is no laughing matter. My sister works at the box office of a major, major venue, and I can tell you she deals with distraught victims pretty much every day. People who traveled across country, even from other countries to see a sold-out concert or a big game only to find out when they try to get in that they're holding bogus tickets. And that's why we were so glad to hear about this investigation. Meet NYPD Detective Mike McCaffrey. He works in the financial crimes unit and he recently spent months chasing down a big fake ticket fraud scheme.

[00:21:29] Mike McCaffrey: Yeah, back in November of 2021, the National Football League reached out to the New York City Police Department and said, we have a problem. There appears that there's an individual that is preying on fans of the NFL. When these individuals try and go buy tickets, it seems too good to be true. They're spending a significant amount of money on incredible seats, and when these individuals get to the game, the tickets never come, and these individuals are stiffed out of the money that they had provided to this person. The NFL did a great job of going back and identifying specific games that they believe this perpetrator had done these sorts of crimes to other victims.

[00:22:12] Bob: And then the NFL goes to the New York City police looking for help.

[00:22:18] Bob: At that point did they think it was just one person?

[00:22:21] Mike McCaffrey: They weren't sure. Um, with these sorts of ticket scams, sometimes you have rings of individuals that are perpetrating these crimes together, and they're able to create a wider network of fraud. In this instance, during the preliminary stages, we weren't definitely sure if it was just one suspect or if this is one suspect working for a larger syndicate of people, and they were combining their winnings together, or their, their fraud earnings. So at that point in time, it was tough to tell.

[00:22:51] Bob: In pretty much every case the NFL identified the crime began with a Craigslist post advertising very expensive tickets at a deeply discounted price.

[00:23:03] Bob: So what's the first thing you do?

[00:23:05] Mike McCaffrey: The first thing we did was have the NFL send us whatever Craigslist advertisements they had identified, and there were a few. Every Craigslist advertisement that we analyzed had what's called an internet protocol address, or an IP address.

[00:23:18] Bob: Here is one of those ads courtesy of AMNY.com.

[00:23:24] Ad: I have 12 tickets available in my suite for this Wednesday evening's New York Mets vs. St. Louis Cardinals game at City Field at 7 pm. Tickets are in Empire Suite 224. You will be directly behind home plate, two sections up from the field, directly behind Section 16. The suites come with extra cushioned seating, private bathrooms, as well as complimentary food and drinks including beer and wine served within suite, all at no extra charge. You will also be given a complimentary Mets hat as well as program for each ticketholder. If you want to buy anything else from the team store, we have a discount there as well you will receive.

[00:24:09] Bob: So Detective McCaffrey sends a subpoena to Craigslist looking for any information on those ads or those IP addresses. And...

[00:24:19] Mike McCaffrey: I remember getting the Craigslist subpoena returned back and it was about, it was a 2000-page pdf. I was like, you've got, you've got to be kidding me.

[00:24:27] Bob: Wow.

[00:24:27] Mike McCaffrey: I sat there painstakingly for about a week, and the format in which this return came wasn't conducive to just copy and pasting into an Excel, so I had to manually transpose everything from this subpoena return into Excel. I did it all myself. It became very um, very keen on specific games that were being targeted, various sports that were being targeted.

[00:24:56] Bob: And in particular, there were a lot of bogus ads targeting fans in Milwaukee.

[00:25:02] Mike McCaffrey: I noticed that, so going, reading every Craigslist ad, after a while you understand what games this suspect is focusing on defrauding people for. We noticed that there were a lot of games in Milwaukee back in 2021 when the Milwaukee Bucks were in the finals and they had that play-off run. And they were doing some Super Bowl. I was curious, like, how many Met games are in here? Just a few. They weren't that good at the time so that makes sense, and they still continue to break my heart every year.

[00:25:32] Bob: Detective McCaffrey, I'm sure you can guess, is a Mets fan. And why this matters, not just that he's a long-suffering Mets fan, but criminals definitely target high demand events, which means teams that are winning a lot like the Philadelphia Eagles.

[00:25:48] Mike McCaffrey: Well once I was able to get all of this data into a spreadsheet, I then wanted to figure out where did these IP addresses resolve to, or what apartment or residence or house did these IP addresses belong to? We cut some subpoenas to the internet providers for those IP addresses, and we saw that there was the same family living or had lived at all three of the addresses that were posting IP address data from. From there, we just did an analysis to figure out that who specifically in this family could it be?

[00:26:25] Bob: Who could it be? Well a 20-something adult with a finance degree lives at that address, Nikhil Mahtani. He becomes the obvious suspect, but now there's much more police work to be done.

[00:26:39] Mike McCaffrey: Once we were able to figure out that one of the individuals that lived in the house was Nikhil Mahtani, we started reaching out to some of the victims. Now this is a very sensitive part of the investigation. What you don’t want to do is talk to too many victims upfront, and a lot of these victims felt embittered by Mahtani's actions. When they would, these people were buying tickets for an amount of money, they're showing up to these games. They're getting stiffed at Will Call, and now they're just sitting outside of the stadium with no tickets, they're lighter in the wallet as a result. What I don't want to do is reach out to a bunch of victims and then some of them feel empowered and reach back out to Mahtani and say hey, law enforcement's looking into you. You'd better watch out. You'd better give me my money back. So I had to be very particular about who we spoke with up front. I tried to base a lot of my initial victim conversations with New York based individuals.

[00:27:34] Bob: As it turns out, these victim interviews yield a lot of information. Mahtani didn't go to a lot of trouble to hide his identity.

[00:27:44] Mike McCaffrey: One of the people that I spoke with, when they were corresponding with Mahtani via text message, they expressed their doubts, like, hey, is this a scam? Sir, can you prove to me this is not a scam. Mahtani sent a picture of his driver's license to the people. Furthermore, he sent a selfie of himself holding his driver's license. That's when we were like, oh, Nikhil Mahtani, okay. That's one of the guys that lives, or has lived at all three of the addresses that we were seeing these Craigslist posts coming from. So right there we had a pretty, it's what we call a clue. We were able to figure out, okay, this is probably our guy. Now is he working with anybody else?

[00:28:23] Bob: That's a pretty great clue.

[00:28:24] Mike McCaffrey: Yeah, that clue was very helpful. So that information, coupled with the IP address data that were getting back from the Craigslist advertisement, was enough for us to say, okay, Mahtani's most likely our guy.

[00:28:37] Bob: He sounds like a terrible criminal.

[00:28:38] Mike McCaffrey: He wasn't the best. He left quite a few digital cookie crumbs and enough cookie crumbs probably to make a full cookie at this point.

[00:28:47] Bob: But never one to prematurely take the cookies out of the oven. Detective McCaffrey is now working with a federal prosecutor in Wisconsin, Assistant US Attorney Dan Humble. Remember, so many of the crimes involve Milwaukee fans. And they decide it's time to close in on the suspect.

[00:29:08] Mike McCaffrey: There came a point in time when Dan and I had the discussion that we thought it would be best if we were able to get Mahtani's electronic devices in our possession. This way we could do search warrants on his phone, on his laptops, whatever he might have. And the reason we wanted to do something like that is, if we're able to get into Mahtani's phones, Mahtani's electronic devices, we might be able to find text message correspondence where Mahtani is postering himself as this individual that's selling these tickets, corresponding with the victims we might find emails where he's pretending to be this person and he's receiving the money. So we thought that was the most logical next step in the investigation was to do a search warrant at Mahtani's residence, get his devices, get into those devices, and really tighten up our case against Mahtani.

[00:30:04] Bob: So they get a search warrant and show up early at Mahtani's home. Well, it's not actually his home.

[00:30:13] Mike McCaffrey: Once we thought that we had enough to prove to a judge that evidence of this crime is going to be inside of Mahtani's mother's apartment, and that Mahtani himself is going to be in that apartment, we swore out a search warrant at the US District Court from the Southern District in New York, and we got a search warrant for Mahtani's mom's apartment. At the time, that's where Mahtani was living. My team and showed up bright and early at 6 am. It was a high-rise apartment on E. 96th St. The morning we hit Mahtani's door, my team and I went in, and he was residing in a small nook in the apartment. I still remember this vividly. I essentially button-hooked through the apartment, I engaged Mahtani almost instantly after getting into the apartment. Mahtani was laying down. He had his phones and his laptop, all within three feet of him. He was laying there dazed. This is early in the morning. He was obviously sleeping at that point. We were able to seize all of Mahtani's electronics that day.

[00:31:25] Bob: Was he scared? Was he surprised? Did he think, oh, I knew this would happen?

[00:31:28] Mike McCaffrey: I don't, I don't know what he was feeling at the time, but I can tell you, he wasn't particularly happy. And he, he didn't, like he wasn't posturing himself as a, he, he didn't seem, he wasn't mad, but he wasn't happy. He goes, "What are you doing here? What's going on?" He had other family members that were in the house. His mom, specifically, she's a very nice woman, very accommodating. Yeah, those are some small things that I remember about it.

[00:31:54] Bob: The electronic devices do reveal a treasure trove of evidence.

[00:31:59] Mike McCaffrey: We brought the devices to Homeland Security Investigations in New York. The technicians at HSI are some of the best. They had relatively no issue getting into these devices. And then my team and I had access to whatever was within the scope of the warrant for anything on these devices. Uh, I would say for the next three or four weeks, I just sat painstakingly at my desk just going line item by line item through Mahtani's phones and his laptops to identify what specifically he was doing. We were trying to identify additional victims either by, you know, any sort of payment method where he's receiving a payment for say 500 bucks and the comment is Packers or New Jersey--, the Brooklyn Mets, right? So we're looking how can we identify more victims and how can we further prove that Mahtani is guilty of this, of this scheme. So those were the two main components that we were looking for while going through these devices. We uncovered a, a multiple of additional victims that we hadn't known about previously. And we were able to identify other email addresses that Mahtani was using to scam people.

[00:33:17] Bob: And at this point it becomes clear, Mahtani had been pulling this luxury ticket scam for a long time -- at least three years. And there is a long list of victims.

[00:33:32] Mike McCaffrey: These Craigslist ads comprised of high-end suites, front row seats, luxury box access at a very reduced price. And he was very verbose in these advertisements too. There was a lot of specific detail that made the people buying these tickets feel comfortable. Hey, I'm an independent wealthy individual. I just can't swing it today. I can't make it to this game. I'm selling these at 50% off. Who wants them? I would say over that period of time with all those ads, probably victimized at least over 100 people.

[00:34:03] Bob: Wow. And how much money are we talking about even though that was, it's really reduced, I'm sure it was still a lot of money.

[00:34:09] Mike McCaffrey: Yeah, when we did the math and we added up what he was requesting on each of these advertisements and how many different times he posted these advertisements, it was over $2 million.

[00:34:20] Bob: Over $2 million. Wow.

[00:34:20] Mike McCaffrey: Something like that, uh, it came. Yeah, yeah, a lot of money for sporting events.

[00:34:25] Bob: Yeah, and he was only working by himself.

[00:34:28] Mike McCaffrey: Yeah, yes, yeah, based off of what we were able to figure out. He was a one-man show.

[00:34:32] Bob: Wow. Did it look like that when you picked him up? Was he driving a $100,000 car?

[00:34:37] Mike McCaffrey: Quite the opposite. Our first human interaction with Mahtani was, he was sleeping on the couch in his mom's apartment, so the exact opposite of what you just said.

[00:34:49] Bob: That's crazy. Where did the money go?

[00:34:51] Mike McCaffrey: From what we could gather based off the records that we were able to get, Mahtani was taking a lot of the proceeds of his scam, and he was pushing them into Draft Kings and Fan Duel; so he was doing his own betting with the proceeds.

[00:35:04] Bob: But was he a gambling addict?

[00:35:07] Mike McCaffrey: I can't say he's an addict. Um, I'm not medically credentialed to, to make that call, but any money that this guy was getting from this scam, he was pushing back into Fan Duel and Draft Kings.

[00:35:20] Bob: Wow.

[00:35:22] Bob: Mahtani stole well more than $100,000, but he was sleeping on his mom's couch and gambling.

[00:35:32] Bob: It sounds like you have a mountain of evidence. How long does it take for you to actually arrest him?

[00:35:38] Mike McCaffrey: As far as arresting somebody goes in a case like this, what you want is to have the investigation buttoned up, you want your i's dotted and your t's crossed. You want to make sure that you could go in and prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person that you're going to be charging is guilty of those crimes. So you want to find as much evidence as you possibly can. You also want to verify some of the evidence that's in there. So for instance, we saw that Mahtani had received a payment, and I'm using this hypothetically for say $500 for a Mets game on July 12th. What we want to do then is subpoena Mahtani's Venmo account and get official records showing that the transaction did go through. And then we also have the, the more arduous task of reaching out to a host of different victims who are scattered all throughout the United States. Obviously, you encounter problems doing that as well. For instance, I know that somebody from email address abc123@gmail.com sent Mahtani 500 bucks for a game. The only thing I know about this victim is their email address. So now I have to cold call, I essentially send them like a, an email saying hey look, I am, I am a cop, I am a detective. Uh, this is real. We're investigating this guy. Can you respond to me? We have to cold call people because all we have is a phone number. And then I have to convince them that I actually am real.

[00:37:03] Bob: You're not a scammer yourself.

[00:37:04] Mike McCaffrey: Uh yeah, and that's another thing. I'd say, "You could Google me, you'll see, you'll see all the civilian complaints that come up about me," that's usually my joke. And uh, there aren't that many. And the people will then be able to say, okay, I feel comfortable talking to this guy.

[00:37:17] Bob: And well, they feel more than comfortable talking about this guy who once stiffed them on game tickets.

[00:37:25] Mike McCaffrey: And I'll say, "Look, I'm not looking to get any information from you. I just want to verify that you did send this guy money for whatever game, whatever event, and this guy never sent you, never gave you tickets." And the people generally are like, oh yeah, go get him. And I, I, this is a, this was a very motivated victim base. These were a lot of people that would say, I live, I live in Ohio, I will pay my own way to get on a plane and go to wherever you need me to testify. Like, this guy did me dirty, not only did he stiff me on the tickets, he was nasty to me via Message when I called him out on it. And we saw Mahtani's approach just based off of the text conversations that we saw that he had with victims was, "I am going to get you these tickets. I promise. Send me the money. I got it. Aw, sorry, I was running late today, I couldn't send it." Then he ghosts them for a bit, and then he bullies them, belittles these people. Tells them, "Leave me the F alone. You're a loser." I'm paraphrasing, but these are the sorts of things that this guy would say after he scammed them.

[00:38:31] Bob: Wow.

[00:38:32] Mike McCaffrey: So these victims were a very motivated bunch of people that would do nothing, would love nothing more than to make sure this guy face justice.

[00:38:43] Bob: Justice doesn't take long. Within months, Mahtani agrees to plead guilty to wire fraud.

[00:38:51] Mike McCaffrey: The way in which we orchestrated it was Mahtani would sign the plea deal, he would then surrender himself to the US Marshalls in Green Bay, which is where the Eastern District of Wisconsin has one of their courthouses. Mahtani would plead guilty. He'd be arraigned, and he would plead guilty all in one hearing. So that's essentially what was agreed upon, or the essence of what was agreed upon between Mahtani's team and the US Attorney's Office. So my team and I flew out to Green Bay. We traversed through the cold February weather.

[00:39:28] Bob: (chuckles)

[00:39:29] Mike McCaffrey: Near Lambeau Field, and Mahtani surrendered himself, he was arraigned, and he pled guilty all in that hearing. Fast-forward about a couple months later, I believe it was June of 2024, and he returns to court. And he is sentenced to 15 months of prison and I believe he had to pay back $88,000 in restitution.

[00:39:51] Bob: Well what do you think of the sentence?

[00:39:52] Mike McCaffrey: I don't really have an opinion on the sentence. I think the judge there analyzed the fact pattern that we presented to them, right? So my job is to gather as much evidence as possible, sell it to the US Attorney's Office, we then worked together and we curate a product and present it to the judge. And the judge reviewed what we had presented based off the evidence that the US Attorney's Office and my team had obtained. And the judge made a ruling - 15 months.

[00:40:26] Bob: It's hard to understand why someone like Mahtani would turn to this life of crime. He obviously wasn't a professional criminal.

[00:40:37] Mike McCaffrey: You know, I, I don't really know what led him to do this, but it's upsetting that he did, and he did it so frequently. We have north of 100 people that have most likely been scammed in this scheme perpetrated by Mahtani. He's continuously doing it. It's not like he did it once and made some money. He continued to do it over a very long period of time, moving residences and taking that money and just like gambling a lot of it away.

[00:41:03] Bob: As far as you, he had no other criminal record, right?

[00:41:05] Mike McCaffrey: To our knowledge, he had no other criminal record, no.

[00:41:07] Bob: So that suggest to me that stealing money through fake sports events is really pretty easy. If you make a fake Craigslist ad and the next thing people are Venmo-ing you money, right, and then I'm saying this because of the other victim I spoke to as well, it just seems like there's a pretty big problem with selling fake tickets.

[00:41:24] Mike McCaffrey: I think it's is very easy to do it. I think it's very easy to commit a multitude of different crimes. But a lot of people don't do it because um, their, they have morals or they're fearful of the consequences that may come as a result of committing these ostensibly easy crimes to commit. And I think that's what dissuades a lot of people is the morality factor and then there's a consequence factor. I don't know how Mahtani analyzed either of those two, but he proceeded and did it, and it wasn't like he was obfuscating himself to a point where we were not able to identify him. Very easily through cyber methods we were able to identify Mahtani. Very easily through financial methods we were able to identify Mahtani, and then very easily through talking with a handful of victims, we were able to corroborate that it was Mahtani because he gave them his real name, or he used a picture of his own driver's license and gave it to a victim.

[00:42:25] Bob: One of the reasons I want to drive that point home is we do these episodes for educational purposes and so I want to impress on listeners that this is a very easy crime to commit, and I imagined a criminal with the tiniest bit more sophistication could really get away with this, right?

[00:42:41] Mike McCaffrey: Yeah, and even if they don't think that they're going to get away with it, they just say, you know what, I'll roll the dice. It's only 500 bucks. The cops probably won't come looking for me. Let's see if I could scam somebody. And $500 is to me, it's a lot of money. I don't have $500 to just lose. If I'm spending $500 on something, I certainly want that, that product or that good or that service as a result. I don't want to just give it away. And yeah, for people that are listening, if there's anything to impress on them, it's that, you have to be very cognizant of who you're buying these tickets from. So maybe that's not the best idea is to buy tickets from somebody from a third-party, from Facebook Marketplace or Craigslist. Maybe going onto a more reputable ticket site, paying a few extra dollars, but knowing that you're going to get these tickets is the safer way to do this.

[00:43:38] Bob: And if my sister were here, she would be hopping up and down and her face would be turning red listening to you, first of all, because she's, again, she's had so many of these conversations. I think one of the reasons that our victim, Hilarie, and the victim you spoke to, was willing to walk from Milwaukee to New York to help prosecute this guy is it's not just $500, it's you just brought your teenage daughter to see Taylor Swift, and now you're in the parking lot with nothing, and it's awful. So it's much more than money, this crime.

[00:44:05] Mike McCaffrey: You, that individual now has to explain to her daughter, first of all, you look foolish in front of your kid, which as a parent, it's like the last thing you want, right? You want your kids to, to learn from you in a good way, not where you just got duped and you're embarrassed. Yeah, it's the last thing you want. It's a shame that it happened to anybody because you're first, let's say you're going out, you, them and their friends were going out, and they're excited, they're, they, for me, I live two hours from some major sports venues. If I had got on this train and it took me two hours to get to the Meadowlands, I wouldn't be particularly happy when I got there and my tickets didn't work.

[00:44:40] Bob: Oh no, that's the, I think what's, this is also I think part of the reason that the crime works is because the buyers are emotionally invested in a way that they aren't in other situations. There's something about sports that brings out the best and worst of all of us, right? And if this was a TV, you probably wouldn't buy a TV from Nikhil, but you're going to buy Mets tickets because it's your once-in-a-lifetime chance to sit at a box at a Mets game or something like that.

[00:45:03] Bob: That's exactly it. I think people, so this is an opportunity to spend, they're spending decent money, but significantly less than they would have normally to gain and experience a sporting event that they will remember forever. And they will remember it forever because when they get there, there's no ticket to be had. So I do understand why people do it; if you can get a ticket for 50% off and still get everything that's included, why wouldn't you do that? And this is why you wouldn't do it because people like Nikhil Mahtani play on people like this.

[00:45:41] Bob: I mean that, that makes sense to me. It's, so it's natural to think, I believe, oh wait, since these are all digital now, that makes crime even easier 'cause there's no ticket. But there's all sorts of things that are happening on the backend that, that are, I know this again from my sister, but that make it --, certainly it's better than when you used to walk up to two guys in the parking lot and hand them cash for paper.

[00:46:02] Mike McCaffrey: Yeah, yeah, it's certainly different, but with these sorts of changes in ticket policy, comes different types of fraud. Like this, would this Mahtani scheme have worked 20 years ago? Probably not because a majority of tickets were still being printed at the time. You'd either print them out on your computer and bring them in and have them scan the code or you're getting, you're still getting like ticket stubs. So this sort of scheme wouldn't have played 20 or so years ago, but I think it's with the evolution of how they, being the arenas, collect these tickets that a crime like this is able to be perpetrated as effectively as Mahtani did for a long as Mahtani did.

[00:46:47] Bob: Yeah, three years, my god, wow.

[00:46:50] Mike McCaffrey: Yeah, and he would, he would have kept going in, in my opinion.

[00:46:53] Bob: Sure.

[00:46:53] Mike McCaffrey: He would have kept going. He, he didn't stop until we hit his door.

[00:46:57] Bob: And, of course, this prosecution aside, there are plenty of ticket scams going on out there, going on right now. Hilarie talked with us, remember, she sought out The Perfect Scam, to help get the word out.

[00:47:11] Hilarie Roth: Yeah, I would warn anybody and everybody listening to this podcast not to buy through any medium that represents private sellers. If they're legitimate private sellers, they are, and if they're not selling to their friends and family for the occasional games they can't go to, they are posting their tickets on Ticketmaster, StubHub, TickPick is actually the preferred for the Philadelphia Eagles. There might be a few other sites out there where it's legit. People load their tickets into a, an escrow account held by the medium, whether that be Ticketmaster or StubHub or TickPick. So everything's legit, everything's straightforward. Yes, you're going to pay fees, but you know what, you're also paying for security and honesty and legitimacy and peace of mind.

[00:48:10] Bob: Go through the official resellers. Yes, their fees are very high, but alternative routes are just too risky.

[00:48:20] Hilarie Roth: Now that I have learned this and I've been so burned, the only way that I would buy tickets outside of one of the legitimate reseller platforms, again, Ticketmaster, StubHub, TickPick, maybe one or two others, is if I knew somebody who knew somebody and it was verified; they were friends with the season ticketholder or it was family members or whatever, or that I'm buying directly from the season ticketholder, because it's been a connection through family or somebody else I know that's very tight with the Philadelphia Eagles community.

[00:48:54] Bob: And I know this is a hard way to put it, but when it's a friend, a family member or something like that, if something goes wrong, they're accountable.

[00:49:02] Hilarie Roth: They are.

[00:49:02] Bob: You can knock on their door and demand an explanation.

[00:49:05] Hilarie Roth: Exactly.

[00:49:05] Bob: And I think this sort of thinking about it in those terms helps. If something goes wrong in a Facebook group, you're not going to be able to complain to their best friend later that this guy's a jerk.

[00:49:15] Hilarie Roth: Exactly.

[00:49:16] Bob: Anyway, I think one of the simplest ways to tell people is, when you're sending money, you should be sending it to one of these big companies. 'Cause like through Ticketmaster, right?

[00:49:25] Hilarie Roth: Yeah. Yeah, I, I...

[00:49:28] Bob: Because this can get confusing. There are like leads for tickets you might find on the Facebook group and they're not all illegitimate, but...

[00:49:33] Hilarie Roth: Yep, I wouldn't mess with the gray areas is what you are talking about.

[00:49:40] Bob: Yes.

[00:49:40] Hilarie Roth: I would, the very straight and narrow, legitimate -- use the verified reseller sites that they've got those tickets in escrow, and that they send them to you through protected safe channels, and be done with it. You want to go, you think about how much I could have paid for legitimate tickets on, with the $1100 I lost on top of the additional $600 I paid for a second round of tickets.

[00:50:10] Bob: It certainly would have easily covered the Ticketmaster fees.

[00:50:15] Bob: I wouldn't mess with the gray areas. That's pretty good advice here. Still, while ticket scams are so prevalent, unfortunately prosecutions are pretty rare.

[00:50:25] Hilarie Roth: It makes me feel better to do this with you because I've been feeling pretty gosh-darned vindictive, like I want to hurt them somehow the way they hurt me, and which is why I reached out to every news outlet and you guys and anyone that I could find that was a fraud investigator, I've reached out and I have to tell you, that had to have been two dozen emails, the same email that I sent to you, Bob, and you're the only one that responded.

[00:50:52] Bob: That makes me feel good. So thank you.

[00:50:55] Bob: I like to think we, here at The Perfect Scam, are good listeners. You know you can write to us like Hilarie did. Our email address is theperfectscampodcast@aarp.org, or you can find me online too. For The Perfect Scam, I'm Bob Sullivan.

(MUSIC SEGUE)

[00:51:24] Bob: If you have been targeted by a scam or fraud, you're not alone. Call the AARP Fraud Watch Network Helpline at 877-908-3360. Their trained fraud specialists can provide you with free support and guidance on what to do next. To learn more about the Fraud Watch Network volunteers and the fraud survivors they've helped, check out the new video series, Fraud Wars, on AARP's YouTube channel. Our email address at The Perfect Scam is: theperfectscampodcast@aarp.org, and we want to hear from you. If you've been the victim of a scam or you know someone who has, and you'd like us to tell their story, write to us. That address again is: theperfectscampodcast@aarp.org. Thank you to our team of scambusters; Associate Producer, Annalea Embree; Researcher, Becky Dodson; Executive Producer, Julie Getz; and our Audio Engineer and Sound Designer, Julio Gonzalez. Be sure to find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. For AARP's The Perfect Scam, I'm Bob Sullivan.

(MUSIC OUTRO)

END OF TRANSCRIPT