An Indiana county is warning residents after a potentially fake event made its way to their community.
The Porter County Indiana Sheriff and the Expo Center and Fairgrounds are working to find anyone who may have purchased tickets to the canceled ballooning event they are now calling a scam.
“We were pretty excited to book this event. It’s a three-day hot air balloon glow. Thought it would be a great community event,” said Lori Daley, the director of the Porter County Expo Center and Fairgrounds. “But then we started seeing a lot of red flags.”
The first red flag, she said, was the address of the event sponsor, which turned out to be the bus barn in nearby Chesterton. Other warning signs caused officials’ concern, before the sponsor canceled the event, which was supposed to happen at the end of June.
Daly and the Sheriff are warning people who might have purchased tickets to alert them to the scam, which the Better Business Bureau said it is seeing repeatedly during the summer months.
“It’s almost a perennial problem,” said Steve Bernas, director of the BBB in Chicago. “It’s just a matter of when the next one will be touted somewhere.”
Bernas said a similar situation just occurred outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
“It’s usually events that are not well known and different,” Bernas said.
Promoters take advantage of social media to spread the word about the bogus event so others can share the message and pass on the misinformation.
The BBB said to prevent this from happening to you, before booking you should: do your research; check for working contact information and phone numbers and, if you decide to buy tickets, pay with a credit card so you can dispute the charges later.
Daly said she has no idea how many people purchased tickets to the event through the promoter’s website and social media pages. She is asking anyone who did to contact her so she can get some idea of the size of the problem and help those affected get their money back. She is even sharing her email address: Ldaly@porterco.org
“We are doing everything we can to get this event off of their Facebook and Event Brite,” she said in a Facebook post. “Again, we are sincerely sorry!”