As K-Pop gained popularity worldwide, tickets to concerts are in high demand. As a result, some people take advantage of fans who can’t get tickets by re-selling the tickets at a higher price.
Besides scalping tickets, some people go even further and sell fake tickets. While this is certainly illegal and not condoned, one story of a young girl selling fake BLACKPINK tickets caught the attention of netizens.
BLACKPINK brought their concert tour BORN PINK to Hong Kong in January 2023. When tickets went on sale months prior, they were sold out immediately, leaving fans with no choice but to look for tickets on secondary markets.
A 20-year-old girl took advantage of this situation. According to her victims, they saw posts on social media and online auction platforms advertising BLACKPINK concert tickets and contacted with the seller, the 20-year-old girl.
One victim paid $4,900 HKD (about $625 USD) for a ticket but couldn’t get in with her electronic ticket on the day of the concert. Another buyer met with the seller on January 14 for four tickets but got suspicious after realizing the numbers on the tickets were all the same. The seller claimed she was selling for a friend, but the buyer called the police, who arrested the seller on the spot.
When interviewed by the police for the first time, the seller stuck to the story of selling tickets for a friend. She claimed the friend gave her a phone to contact the buyers. The phone also contained the electronic concert tickets she was trying to sell.
However, during the second interview, she admitted to lying in the first interview. She revealed that, after attending the concert herself on January 13, she edited her electronic ticket and sold copies online.
With the seller admitting to the charges, this seems to be an open-and-shut case. However, as her lawyer revealed why she sold fake tickets, the story caught the attention of many.
According to her lawyer, the seller’s father left their family behind after racking up gambling debts. This situation left her mother, who worked at construction sites, as the family’s sole breadwinner.
Her lawyer further claimed that she was a model student in high school and achieved a GPA of 3.5 in her first year of university in Taiwan. However, to help with her family’s finances, she withdrew from school and got a job as a waitress back in Hong Kong. Half of her salary went to her mother, while another portion was used to pay for her brother’s schooling.
In her mitigation letter, she promised she would not do such illegal things in the future.
I wanted to take the weight off my mother’s shoulders, but what I did was completely wrong.
– Mitigation letter
Ultimately, she was charged with 4 counts of fraud and 1 count of attempted fraud. She is currently detained while waiting for sentencing.
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