The Irish pop vocal group Westlife’s popularity is never a doubt ever since one of their songs “Swear It Again” topped in the UK charts as soon as they made their debut on April 1999. Every song they released after that kept on being loved by fans and that leads to their success in doing a world tour as well.

SOURCE: Ticket2U

When they decided to do a tour in Malaysia in 2019, an unemployed man, S Kelvin Raj decided to take advantage of this concert knowing Malaysian fans will go above and beyond just to get the tickets. He managed to fool a saleswoman, Sim Ting Ting, into buying 751 concert tickets worth RM151,756 in which all of it was fake.

He was indicted for 45 charges in the Magistrate’s Court for getting Sim Ting Ting to believe the tickets he was selling were genuine. However, he pleaded not guilty for the 45 charges and manages to get bail for RM30,000, detained his passport and needs to report himself to the nearest police station every month. Thankfully, this issue resolved and the concert went well with all the tickets being sold out officially.

As a consumer or to be exact, a fan who would buy concert tickets for the sake of witnessing their idol in front of their eyes, needs to be careful when it comes to buying them. Must always make sure to buy tickets from an authorized seller. Some artists’ concert tickets would be hard to get where you need to wait for the page to get loaded when you buy online or queue from the dawn in front of the ticket counter. It is better to bear the pain of waiting rather than being fooled with a fake ticket, ending up losing your money and not even going to the concert.

Not only this, people need to be careful of ticket touts as well. They are those who buy multiple tickets that are hard to get and sells them at a higher price. No doubt that they might be selling fake tickets as well. Hence, authorized ticket sellers must make a move by making sure there are no fake tickets being sold.

SOURCE: Sinar Harian