A group of Liverpool fans all found out they'd been scammed out of tens of thousands of pounds for Champions League final tickets.
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To some on Saturday it will be a trip of a lifetime, to see the team they support in the biggest annual game of European football, when Liverpool take on Real Madrid, as long as it hasn't been ruined by their dog.
However, a large group of fans won't be making inside the Stade de France for the game, after at least 50 people were scammed online by fake tickets.
Ray Mcdonald had bought off the seller previously this season but when he realised that his £1,000 ticket, and those of his friends, for the final were fake, he tried to get in contact with them, only to find they'd disappeared.
"We bought 19 tickets at a grand each so we've spent £19,000 between us," the 33-year-old told the Liverpool Echo.
"It looked legit at first, I didn't think anything of it. About 11pm last night I was about to go to sleep and my phone was going mad.
"I tried to phone [the ticket tout] and it said the number was not in service anymore and at that point I was like 'I've been done here.'"
As well as the phone number not being in service, the Twitter account that promoted the tickets, and previously real ones, was also deleted.
Mcdonald revealed he was added to a Whatsapp group of around 50 other Liverpool fans who had been duped by the same scheme.
That totalled around 150 tickets, with other people also messaging Ray on social media to reveal they'd also been done out of money, from someone him and his friends had bought around 40 tickets from in the past.
The Wirral native had been told by his bank they can't do anything about it as he still received a ticket, albeit fake, and told to report the matter to the police.
Another fan who was scammed, after seeing others he knew buy legit tickets off the tout, told the paper, "I found out last night and it does make you feel quite sick to be honest. I've been very careful about doing things like this in general.
"I feel like I'm pretty street wise but the fact that he had all these reviews from all these people who I vaguely know or I've met before, nothing made me think 'OK he could be a scammer'."
The club have previously cancelled the tickets of 13 fans who won them in the club's ballot and then tried to sell them to make profit, and warned of potential bans for anyone who tries to do that with the limited seats available to the club.
Despite the 81,338 capacity at France's national stadium, each of the two clubs competing in the final were only given 19,618 tickets each.
Other tickets are sold to football fans generally, which fans of the clubs can get their hands on too, but a lot of them are for corporate sponsors, a fact that angers fans every year but never changes.
Featured Image Credit: PA/Liverpool Echo
Topics: Liverpool, Champions League, Premier League, Real Madrid, La Liga
