After two months of investigation, Bay area police have finally resolved the nationally publicized ticket scam scandal.
California native Sharon Osgood and her family of die-hard 49ers fans responded to a Craigslist ad of a Raven fan selling four tickets to the Big Game claiming he could not make it. Osgood sent in her money to the man she had met online and anxiously waited to receive tickets to the biggest sporting event of the year. When her FedEx package finally arrived, the contents were to put it gently, not as advertised.
Osgood opened up the package to find taunts including “Go Ravens! LOL!” —with no tickets inside.
After hearing about widely publicized scam, Ticketmaster, StubHub, and the 49ers organization were quick to offer the family free tickets to watch their favorite team play in New Orleans. In fact, the Osgood’s were even able to dine with Troy Aikman in the days leading up to Super Bowl XLVII.
The Alameda County Sheriff’s Office had trouble weaving through the web of deceit that the scam artist laid out for them before eventually taking 37-year-old suspect Robert Pham into custody. By re-tracing the steps of the Craigslist ad and the FedEx tracking number, police were able to narrow down their search to a Miami facility. Upon further investigation, they were able to identify the man on video using the security footage at the facility.
Police claim that this was not Pham’s first scamming. Pham even went as far to tell the arresting officers that he is a lieutenant in the US Navy and son of the Baltimore Ravens physical therapist, both blatant lies. His biggest claim to prove his innocence was that the tickets “must have gotten lost in the mail.”
The South Florida scam artist is being held in jail with a $20,000 bail having been set. The charges against Pham include one count of felony theft charges.
Osgood was surprised that someone would do this to honest people, but in the end feels as if she got some closure. “We got to go the game, and that’s all we ever wanted,” said Osgood. “Yeah, we lost $5,900, but we still got to go and we had an awesome time. Buying tickets off Craigslist is definitely nothing I’ll ever do again.”
The moral of the story, do not send money to someone you do not know on a website that is not authorized to sell tickets. Osgood and the other parties that were scammed were luckily compensated, but this is not always going to be the case.
Unfortunately for Osgood and company, the bad karma of one Ravens “fan” was not enough to lead the San Francisco 49ers to victory, but at least the family got to watch their team compete in one of the more exciting Super Bowls in NFL history.
