Are your Seahawks tickets legit? Bogus ones being sold

SEATTLE -- The Seahawks home opener is just three days away and if you don’t have tickets yet, you can always pay out of the nose and buy them online. But you better beware as Kent police are sounding the alarm -- someone is scamming dozens of buyers on Craigslist.

CenturyLink is sold out for Sunday’s game -- the anticipated face-off with the rival 49ers -- but police think there could be fans who don’t know they have counterfeit tickets. What’s worse, the counterfeit tickets look like the real deal and fans who are holding them won’t know that until they show up and are turned away at the gate.

Photo courtesy of thepenaltyflagblog.com/Adam Smith

Kent police detectives said more than 20 people have come forward claiming they were scammed online. All the tickets are for the very same seats -- and whoever has the bogus tickets agrees to make the deal at Kent Station.

Scrolling through Craigslist, you can see there are dozens of people looking to buy and sell seats for Sunday’s game. And the prices aren’t cheap.

Nolan Bliss and his buddy Ben Doggett spent nearly $500 for tickets.

“I wouldn’t miss it for anything,” Bliss said. “We’re from Spokane, we made that drive.”

But they didn’t get their tickets from Craigslist.

“Craigslist is kind of like a weird site,” Doggett said. “I wouldn’t trust it for tickets. Maybe a couch, but not for tickets.”

Police say there may be more victims out there. They’ve received reports of the scam from people in Portland and even New York.

Ticketmaster said last-minute buyers looking for tickets outside the stadium could be swindled, too.

“Those are very high-risk,” Ticketmaster spokesman Gary Brosius said. “There are a lot of folks out there that are going to take advantage of everybody’s passion. And folks that are on the street, sometimes you can tell by feeling and look that it might not be the right situation.”

Plus, Ticketmaster also can’t guarantee tickets sold at other online sites will be legit.

“It’s a $4.5 billion industry and it’s there for a reason,” Brosius added. “People are looking to be very deceptive within that marketplace.”

Brosius said the only way to know if your tickets are the real deal is if you buy them from a verified partner, such as the NFL ticket exchange.