Before the dust settles on the SIM swap scammers, another clique of young ‘elite’ cartel of youngsters has emerged, entailing university lads aged between 18 to 20 years scamming event organisers by selling fake tickets in high profile events.
On Saturday during the Hype Fest in Ngong’ Racecourse, eight youngsters were caught selling fake ticket tags for the event after one of them bought the ticket and gained access to the original ticket.
The lads would then retreat to a Toyota Premio they pack in the event parking lot and photoshop as well as print new tags which they sell to event goers at great discounts and have them gain access.
The arrested students named Brandon, Hillary, Nick, Wesley and Malick are expected in court this afternoon. They were found to have sold event tickets worth over Ksh 500,000 within 30 minutes of their operation during Nasty C’s concert at the Waterfront.
“We caught eight kids operating from a Toyota Fielder in the parking lot selling fake tags. They had a whole shoe box full of different tags, they even had tags for the Rick Ross concert,” said the organisers, who spoke to Kahawa Tungu.
Apart from the Hype Fest, the cartel has been involved in selling tickets during high profile events such as the Koroga Festival, Fally Ipupa show, Rick Ross, Mr Eazi Concert among others.
The well-organised cartel sends one guy who enters the event and takes pictures of all the tags being used (AAA, VIP, VVIP and Vendors), they send the picture of the tickets through Whatsapp to the designer (Only identified as Malick) who organizes the artwork (if any) and gets the tags made. Malick brings the tags to the ring leader (identified as Brandon Duncan Omondi and went to school at Lukenya High) who usually has a ready market waiting outside the venue.
He sells at a subsidized price -specifically VIP because that’s where everyone wants to be from the guys who can’t afford the actual ticket price to thieves/pickpockets.
Read: 11 Suspects Connected To Sim Registration Scam Nabbed
“If your ticket goes for Ksh8,000 VIP, he’ll sell the tag to you at half of that. He sells 30 VIP tickets, that’s 120,000 quick and all he spent on the tags plus art work (if any) is probably Ksh6,000. Once he’s sold, he ghosts the scene,” says one of the event organisers who nabbed the university kids.
They sell from one of their cars (mostly hired so that in case they’re caught it is traced to someone else).
In a ‘good’ day, the cartel is able to make well above Ksh 600,000.
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