JOY AFTER ED SHEERAN TICKET SCAM

An Ed Sheeran ticket scam left a Broome single mother and her daughter heartbroken last week, after she exhausted all avenues to have the situation rectified. 

Becca Sariago has been battling breast cancer and her house was flooded last week. The ticket scam was the icing on the cake, and she shared a Facebook post about her dilemma, hoping that she could purchase tickets even though the Sunday night concert was sold out. 

“I was scrolling through the marketplace and saw that there were Ed Sheeran tickets for sale. I went through and had a really good look at all the different people, and I reached out to a couple of them with who we had mutual friends,” she said.

After a conversation with the seller who asked her for PayPal information - Ms. Sariago felt confident to purchase the tickets.

“I gave them my email address to send the tickets through not thinking about how the email address is actually connected to my pay ID, and that's how I worked it out because it was through the pay ID where the bank said, ‘We're putting a hold on your card and account because it looks like an unauthorised transaction has happened.”

After posting on Facebook about the incident Ms. Sariago was interviewed by Nine News, and received over 30 messages offering her tickets. Ms. Sariago wanted to raise awareness about scammers. It was not her intention to get people to give her tickets.

“It wasn't intended to be a sob story or to try and acquire tickets, and I feel blessed in that,” she said.

“It’s confirmation of what my everyday belief is - no matter what goes on in our life, and it could be so bad - like cancer is bad, or it could be a broken nail bad, find joy in it, find the happiness in it.”

The confirmation that came out of it was how many beautiful big-hearted people there truly are in this beautiful world. There is the balance and the polarity that things happen, and this was a crappy situation again, but you know, we laughed through it we smiled through it.”

Ms Sariago was offered tickets by a mother and daughter but respectfully declined.

“I couldn't take that opportunity, and level of joy from somebody else,” she said.

“So when my cousins reached out to me and were like ‘we've got tickets. Come and enjoy it with us,’ It was like ‘wow’.”