You bet a typographer/printer could make a killing. It’s an ethical dilemma that (hopefully) most designers/printers/artists have worked through, and weighed in on the side of good.

In my art school days (the 80s before holographic printing and other security measures), there was ample access to color copiers and talented friends. The worst my own group did was to copy monthly bus passes (either through copying or some awesome color pencil forgery); using markers to replicate handstamps for free access into clubs; to fashion the occasion student ID.

By the time I was a professional designer, with access to sophisticated scanning/printing equipment before ubiquity made them available to everyone, I had kind of realized the evil potential. I rejected several offers to create stuff for money.

It was a combination of growing up, of being the victim of identity theft myself, and of having some kind of moral compass, kept me from making serious, serious bank by scamming others. I certainly hope most designers would come to this conclusion, too.

Thanks! Love your site, as usual. Becky

Actually, the MOST obvious giveaway is that the service charge is impossibly low. On the fake ticket it is less than 10%, whereas on the real one it is over 20% of face.

I’ve been shopping for Leonard Cohen tix this week on Craigslist for the upcoming Beacon Theater show. There were a number of fishy things that could have been explained away to the desperate and careless, such as:

-same price for orchestra seats, third row center; everyone else is selling them for at least 10X as much -guy says he buys 50 tickets on his “Black Card” at discounts and already made the profit; last pair available -sends his homey who looks like he slept on the subway last night; tix are sort of sweaty, even though in #10 envelope -wants to meet outside Starbucks at night, instead of inside

But the best part of my thwarting a potential disaster for us is: I am graphic designer who could counterfeit tickets much, much better than this guy did. Using a color copier is not enough. One reason all that fine print, at 4pt can be read, is it’s offset, in a solid ink instead of screened, like a color copier, or lower-res printer could do. The back was fuzzy. The ink was all the same contrast, as opposed to an offset dull for the “blank” and a glossier black for the event info. The magnetic block part of the back would not be glossy, as in a color laser. The kicker mistake, however, was that, even though there were perfs, the edges weren’t cut perfectly. There was literally a zig-zag “pause” in the X-Acto knifing of the tix; and the registration of the front/back was off.

I thought briefly about the way I would go about making tix, to a perfection that only the barcode scanner would reject, using high-res Epson inkjet, then running it through a laser for the event, using a Craft ROBO to perf/cut perfectly. I know I could do it…but just the hassle of dealing with folks to rip them off isn’t worth it, not to mention the consequences of a fraud arrest.

It’s one thing to rip off Ticketmaster itself, especially in light of all the recent consumer fraud of their own. But to rip off “real people” is unthinkable.

Thanks for the great comments. Yes, creating forgeries to rip off actual people, rather than faceless corporations, is unthinkable. But clearly it goes on. I wonder if the relevant authorities have any idea how widespread this scam is.

Ahhh Market Square Arena (R.I.P) I too paid $12.50for admission to that very venue for my very first concert: REO Speedwagon circa 1982.

An ethical dilemma? There’s no dilemma here, its crooked period. And faceless corp. vs. real people is a nonsensical distinction. cripes.

I collect ticket stubs, and I know a little about them. On the fake ticket where it reads “07OCT09” is when it was printed. A ticket printed in October 2009 for a November 2008 concert? That is an obvious fake. I’ve bought from scalpers with success (to see Dethklok/Mastodon), but I knew what the tickets looked like.