Thrown for a loss by bogus tickets

Getting tickets to hugely popular sporting events and concerts is getting easier.

Just ask 500 fans who snagged tickets from scalpers to see football rivals Texas Tech and the University of Texas play this month. Closer to home, 150 folks scored tickets to the USC vs. Ohio State game in September.

Up in Vancouver, Canada, numerous Madonna devotees got highly coveted tickets to see the Material Girl the first time she played that city in October. And talk about beyond last minute: Hockey fans outside Madison Square Garden were able to buy tickets for the final 40 minutes of a Pittsburgh-New York matchup in April.

Unfortunately, none of those people got inside the gates. The tickets they bought were counterfeits.

In fact, at least 16 of the Madonna tickets were for the same seat.

A rash of counterfeiting has been reported this year at sports and entertainment events. Fans bought the tickets, which looked legitimate, often at prices above face value, only to be turned away.

And the counterfeits weren’t cheap -- the USC vs. Ohio State fakes sold for an average of nearly $400 apiece.

The scam is sometimes pulled off by people using sophisticated technology that allows them to copy elaborately designed tickets, including holograms.

But a convenience factor used by many events for online selling has opened up counterfeiting to just about anyone with a home computer setup.

“All you need is a good printer,” said Brian Pike, chief technology officer of Ticketmaster, which sells print-your-own e-tickets -- also used by many airlines -- to events nationwide. A fraudster merely needs to order one or two legitimate tickets and then make extras to sell.

In some cases, the frauds are caught when ticket takers, who use portable hand-held scanners at many venues, check the bar codes printed on the tickets.

“Several people might come to the gate with the same bar code on the ticket,” Pike said. “But only one of them will get in.”

So how do you avoid getting caught up in a fraud?

The first line of defense is to order tickets only through the promoter of the event. In other words, if you want a USC football ticket, buy it by calling the school’s ticket office at (213) 740-4672 or going to the team website at usc.trojans .cstv.com and clicking on the tickets link.

But you also can go retro -- and pay a visit to the box office at Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.

And unless a scammer finds a way into the USC ticketing system, you can rest assured that these tickets are the real thing.

But what if tickets to the section of the stadium you want aren’t available?

Or, as is the case with USC, all of the remaining games for this season are sold out? Even the away games for USC are sold out.

There are still ways to get legitimate tickets. You can go to an authorized ticket broker. Ticketmaster, through its TicketsNow.com service, offers tickets to sold-out events, including USC games.

And individual sellers trying to unload extra tickets can be found at StubHub.com, owned by EBay Inc.

The disadvantage of using TicketsNow or StubHub is that you’ll often pay premium prices far above face value or handling fees, and sometimes both.

The advantage -- not to be sneezed at in this era of counterfeiting -- is that the tickets are guaranteed.

Using these services eliminates the thrill of the hunt -- finding hard-to-get or bargain tickets through a non-guaranteed classified ad site or from a scalper in the very shadow of a venue.

But having a guarantee can prevent you not only from losing money but also from looking like an idiot. And that can be priceless, especially on a first date.

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david.colker@latimes.com