Consumers warned about scams to sell tickets to Obama inauguration
For auction on EBay: a pair of tickets to the Barack Obama inauguration!
Yes you can, for a minimum of $5,000 apiece, be part of history.
Unfortunately, government officials said, it might be scam history. Swearing-in ceremony tickets, which are supposed to be free of charge, haven’t even been issued, and there’s evidence that fraudsters might be trying to sell fakes.
“It’s buyer beware,” said Howard Gantman, staff director for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies.
For most of the public, the only sure way to get tickets is through members of Congress, who will be issued most of the roughly 240,000 tickets for the Jan. 20 ceremony on the west side of the U.S. Capitol.
The EBay auction, posted by a site user who calls himself or herself Honjarlan, are for tickets “from a source in Congress that will not be able to attend.”
Honjarlan didn’t reply to e-mailed requests for an interview, which was no surprise. Included in the description of the tickets was “Do not ask where they are coming from because I will not answer that.”
It goes on to say that the tickets must be paid for immediately at the end of the auction and then would be sent to the lucky winner “the day I recieve (sic) them.”
Gantman wasn’t impressed. “How would anyone know that person really has access to tickets?” he asked. The tickets won’t go to members of Congress until a few days before the event.
But Gantman acknowledged that the transaction could be valid. “There are some people who doubtless will get tickets without saying they are planning to resell them.”
In Missouri, the attorney general’s office got so many complaints from people offered tickets for sale, either directly or through websites, that it issued a warning “to be on the lookout for scam artists.”
But the StubHub site for ticket buyers and sellers said it was working to ensure that the inaugural offerings on its platform were legitimate. As of Wednesday, 13 tickets were for sale on the EBay-owned site for a low of $1,950 to a high of $7,500 apiece.
Sean Pate, a spokesman for StubHub, said that only a select group of sellers was being allowed to offer the tickets.
“They have to be very reputable sellers who have a history of selling inauguration tickets through us,” Pate said.
The company doesn’t ask questions about the origin of the tickets.
Pate said he expected demand to heat up as the event approached.
“There will be many people who aren’t going to be able to get their hands on free tickets,” he said, “and will be willing to pay for theirs on the secondary market.”
StubHub guarantees its transactions, offering the buyer a comparable ticket or a full refund if the deal goes bad.
The inaugural committee, headed by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), said it would be meeting soon with EBay and other online venues to try to persuade them to curb the ticket sales. A spokesperson for San Jose-based EBay Inc. said the company would have no comment on the matter until at least after the meeting.
Feinstein wants to go further. She said she planned to introduce a bill to make the selling of the tickets illegal. But for the law to go into effect for this inauguration, Congress would have to act fast. And that could be difficult.
“Congress has some very big business in terms of the economy to deal with,” Gantman said.
Still, there’s a way to get a cheap inaugural ceremony ticket that would not stir the ire of officials.
As of Wednesday, there were three tickets for auction on EBay offered for $7.
One catch: They were for the Jan 20, 2001, swearing-in of George W. Bush.
David Colker is a Times staff writer.
