A Scottish man whose id was stolen to entrance a pretend Premier League soccer ticket web site says he’s devastated that scammed followers consider he’s accountable.
Ticket Maestro, which launched in July, claimed to be promoting tickets to high soccer matches however the BBC has since heard from supporters who paid a whole bunch of kilos for tickets they by no means acquired.
A BBC Radio 4 You and Yours investigation discovered that Richard Russell was named on official paperwork because the boss of the net ticketing website with out him realizing something about it.
Mr Russell, 44, says his household tackle, close to Stirling, is now being printed on-line and dissatisfied followers are threatening to show as much as get their a reimbursement.
Ticket Maestro claimed to be promoting tickets for fixtures within the Premier League, in addition to sure matches within the Scottish Premiership and the Champions League.
It described itself as a “Trusted and Licensed Ticketing Accomplice” [sic] when the web site was lively.
Three months after it was arrange, having taken hundreds of pound in ticket orders, it disappeared.
A BBC investigation has revealed Ticket Maestro was not licenced to promote Premier League tickets, and doing so unauthorised is prohibited.
Richard Russell’s identify was used to signed off all correspondence, together with order affirmation letters and customer support emails.
A restricted firm, UCL Tickets Ltd, was named on financial institution statements when prospects paid.
It had a person known as “Richard Rutherford Russell” listed as director on Corporations Home.
The BBC tracked down Mr Russell primarily based on this info held at Corporations Home.
He informed the BBC he was astonished to find his id was getting used as director of UCL Tickets Ltd – a agency he had by no means heard of, and with which he had by no means consented to be concerned.
Mr Russell stated: “I do not know about soccer tickets. I’ve by no means had something to do with soccer tickets. I couldn’t even inform you two or three groups in a soccer league within the UK simply now.”
Eight years in the past Mr Russell married an Albanian girl and has since lived within the nation’s capital Tirana along with his spouse and their two-year-old daughter.
He defined that the tackle documented in Corporations Home information is definitely his dad and mom’ residence in Callander, close to Stirling. In addition they don’t have anything to do with the web site.
It was in October, when his dad and mom acquired a letter within the publish naming “Richard Rutherford Russell” as director of UCL Tickets Ltd, that Mr Russell realised he had been a sufferer of id theft .
He informed You and Yours: “I believed it may’ve been a rip-off letter, so I went onto Corporations Home and checked the corporate quantity.
“Positive sufficient, I noticed there was submitting for my identify towards an organization that I knew nothing about. It stated I had been lively since April.”
As soon as he acquired the letter from Corporations Home, Mr Russell says he started making an attempt to take away his identify.
“I needed to ship particulars proving that my guardian’s tackle within the UK has nothing to do with Ticket Maestro, and that I’ve nothing to do with it,” he says.
“I despatched my passport, financial institution statements and every little thing.
“They got here again to me in a short time and stated, ‘we agree with you, we’ve got taken you off that and it will likely be mirrored immediately’.”
Though his identify has been faraway from the profile on Corporations Home, Mr Russell says he has been devastated by evaluations left on Trustpilot which had named him primarily based on the corporate info.
Mr Russell stated: “It’s those which have put ‘right here is that this man’s residence tackle, he’s primarily based right here’. The tackle they’re quoting is my dad and mom’ tackle.
“It’s horrible to suppose somebody can use your identify on-line whereas they’re mainly stealing cash off individuals.”
A spokesperson for Trustpilot stated: “We take the integrity of our platform extraordinarily significantly.
“When companies join to make use of Trustpilot they comply with adhere to a strict set of pointers, and if we discover there was any try and mislead shoppers by means of evaluations, our specialist groups implement our Motion We Take coverage.
“Our platform is open, unbiased and neutral. Anybody can go away a assessment, as long as it’s primarily based on a real expertise.”
Trustpilot say it has eliminated a whole bunch of evaluations from Ticket Maestro’s profile, closed it to new evaluations and positioned a warning banner on the profile, telling shoppers what it has achieved.
Followers say Ticket Maestro managed to defraud them out of a substantial sum of money.
On-line funds system PayPal says it has acquired a whole bunch of refund claims from individuals who purchased tickets from the web site.
PayPal says tickets which have been bought are eligible for Purchaser Safety, which covers purchases that don’t arrive or don’t match the vendor’s description.
The BBC tried to make contact with Ticket Maestro utilizing the e-mail tackle it had used to speak with prospects however it bounced again. There was no cellphone quantity related to the web site.
In the meantime, Leicestershire Police say they’ve launched an investigation.
A Leicestershire Police spokesperson stated: “A 30-year-old girl has been arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to defraud and has since been launched beneath investigation. Enquiries stay ongoing as our investigation continues.“
