Gold Is Elusive to the Scalpers

The one night that looked like easy money, the streets fat with customers and cash, Benny Castellon stood empty-handed.

Everyone knew that women’s figure skating would be the big event of the 2006 Winter Olympics. Castellon certainly knew it. But the morning of the final, he says, a shop that was supposed to feed him black-market tickets was shut down by police.

“Big night if you can touch tickets,” he said. “If you can’t touch ‘em, it’s pointless.”

As crowds filed into the Palavela arena Thursday evening, he lingered on a nearby corner, wearing a parka against the cold, commiserating with other scalpers, checking his cellphone. Just in case.

“I mean, it’s our job,” he said. “We’ve still got to go at it.”

These Olympics looked sweet from back home in Downey. Thoughts of countless Italians who needed tickets, and Germans and French and Swiss driving across the border. But after Castellon hopped a flight from Los Angeles, after he landed in Italy, the story turned differently.

The Italians either didn’t care about the Games, couldn’t afford to pay or didn’t trust scalpers. The uniformed carabinieri officers hassled anyone selling on the street. For a guy who usually moved tickets to Dodger and Laker games, the Olympics proved nothing but a headache.

Now came a wasted opportunity, a big night gone by. As if to rub it in, a pretty young woman in a quilted white jacket walked up, speaking broken English.

I can buy tickets? ... No ... No tickets?

No, nothing.

Castellon might have known. Throughout much of the winter, advance ticket sales for these Olympics had been sluggish. There was talk of filling empty stands with schoolchildren.

Still, Castellon said, “I thought this would be great because it’s Europe.”

The 26-year-old is stout, and looks even chunkier in that heavy coat, his round face punctuated by a goatee. He runs a ticket agency in Downey and paired up with some other Los Angeles brokers to form a team here.

They had worked Super Bowls and World Series and the 2004 Summer Games in Athens, so they knew to arrive a week early, knew how to connect with scalpers from other countries who regularly show up at international events.

“We all somehow find each other,” Castellon said. “We try and figure out ways so we can all make money.”

It is illegal for anyone other than authorized vendors to sell tickets at these Games. The black-market tickets were originally sold through official outlets, then came into the hands of middlemen who passed them on to scalpers.

Castellon said he and his partners paid pennies on the dollar, but then things went south. The night of the opening ceremony, the Southern Californians found themselves dumping expensive seats for a fraction of their face value. One of the partners, who gave his name only as Jimmy, said: “Right then and there, we knew. Even the pin traders left.”

A few days later, Castellon sat on a bench near a bus stop in the mountain village of Cesana. It was cold and windy, and his mood was already souring.

“Everybody in L.A. understands what we do,” he said later. “Some people don’t like us, but all we do is provide a service.”

In Italy, fans walked right past, ignoring his offers of a 50%, discount, paying full price at the box office. Even after Turin officials announced that ticket sales had improved -- they surpassed 800,000 by midway through the Games -- large blocks of seats remained empty at many events.

As if that weren’t bad enough, Castellon began getting in trouble with the carabinieri, the country’s paramilitary police.

Outside the speedskating arena in Turin this week, police merely chased scalpers away from the front gate, shooing them down the block. In other cases, they have detained scalpers and issued citations carrying fines of 2,500 to 10,000 euros, or the equivalent of $3,000 to $12,000.

Too many times, Castellon said, he and other scalpers wasted hours in a police station, waiting to receive their citations and be released. None have paid their fines yet.

Some days were better than others. The Alpine events did well, so long as bad weather did not force a postponement. The U.S.-Russia hockey game was a good seller, and Castellon said he moved 300 tickets -- he did not divulge his profit -- to a packed schedule of events last Saturday.

But for every good day, there were two when he could not manage a single sale.

So, by Thursday night at Palavela, any thoughts of a windfall had long since evaporated.

A man walked up and asked whether he had tickets to sell.

No, I need ... You don’t have any? ... No, I don’t have.

All types of scalpers were hanging around the arena. Young Italians and older men from Britain. A guy from Canada. A Hong Kong kid with stylish jeans and his hair bleached blond.

They moved like fish in a tank, clustering for a moment in one place, approaching potential customers, skittering away just as quickly. Most had no desire to speak with a reporter.

After five years of doing this, Castellon said, it can be a tough business even in the best of times. A lot of hustling. A lot of uncertainty.

“Not everybody can survive out here,” he said.

With all his troubles in Turin, it would seem logical that he might never work another Olympics. Certainly not another big event in Italy.

He shook his head. “I’m not going to say that.”

A guy showed up with two tickets to sell, asking 700 euros each. The price was steep, but the competition had started, so there was a chance he might come down after a few minutes.

“There’s always a way around everything,” Castellon said. “You’ve just got to figure it out.”