Family scammed out of hundreds with fake Justin Bieber tickets



EDMONDS, Wash. -- An Everett father is out hundreds of dollars after a crook sold him two fake tickets to the Justin Bieber concert in Seattle through Craigslist.

Investigators, though, just got a break in the case, thanks to where that ticket exchange took place.

Margaret Bader, 15, is a proud “Belieber.”

So when Justin Bieber’s March concert tickets sold out online, Margaret’s dad, Gus, turned to Craigslist to get a sweet sixteen birthday gift for his daughter.

“I got online and started searching everywhere we could for tickets and most of the tickets were grossly expensive, and we started finding some that were little within reason so I started negotiating with people,” Gus Bader told Q13 News.

Gus finally scored two floor tickets for $400, and they’re tickets Margaret and her friend say looked as real as the others they’ve used before. However, when they showed up to Key Arena for the event, their Bieber Fever went cold.

“We waited over an hour in the pouring down rain and then we finally got there, handed in our tickets and then it flashed red and we were like, oh is that bad or something, and he said the ticket’s not working,” said Margaret Bader.

Gus exchanged money for those tickets in this Edmonds Safeway parking lot. Police say thanks to the store’s surveillance, they now have a picture of the suspect.

“We were able to determine the suspect had been in the store and we were able to work with Safeway and get a video of our suspect leaving the store prior to meeting our victim,” said Edmonds Police Sgt.  Shane Hawley.

Catching him doesn’t get these teens any closer to the Biebs, but they hope no one feels the disappointment they did.

“We’re hoping that we’re just going to be able to get justice for it, even though we lost the experience -- hoping that he won’t be able to do it again to anyone else,” said Margaret Bader.



If the man in the photo looks familiar to you, call Crime Stoppers 1-800-222-TIPS, you could get a reward up to $1,000.