UNL Police warn of ticket scams ahead of Huskers’ new football season
LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – For students searching for a way into Memorial Stadium before the Huskers’ first game on Saturday, social media could make finding a last-minute ticket seem easy, but UNL Police say that same convenience makes you a target to scammers.
Police are reporting that students were scammed in the last two weeks alone.
“This year and recently we’ve seen they’ve just been reaching out on GroupMe,” said UNL Police Captain Aaron Pembleton.
GroupMe is a popular student platform, but Pembleton says ticket scammers strike every year around this time through a variety of sites.
He says the period between the end of August and the beginning of September sees an increase in scams across the nation because of the new football season at many Universities.
As for the students recently scammed at UNL, he had this to say.
“The students were looking for tickets, so they were like ‘hey, I’ll take your tickets and then it was like, ‘okay, here pay this random Apple Cash account which again, does not match with the name that they were using in GroupMe,” said Pembleton.
He says when usernames and payment accounts don’t match, it’s a major red flag, adding that you should also be mindful of what site you are using too; especially student sites.
“I think there is some anonymity with it,” said Pembleton.
“They know on campus settings, here’s these large groups of people that are joining these things and you don’t know everybody that’s in it. You know you get on campus and it’s like hey here’s a big UNL intramural club, I want to join it because I want to be part of this and there’s hundreds of people so there’s a lot of people you can connect with that.”
He adds that it’s also easy advertising because the group is so big.
Pembleton says if you do get scammed the first thing you should do is call the police, as for the money loss, acting fast might make a difference with getting some of it back.
“Sometimes you can contact your bank or the Venmo or whoever it is and be like, hey I think I’m being scammed can you stop process on this and sometimes they’ll work with you to stop and get you your money back. I’m not saying it happens all the time, and it has a lot to do with how quick it goes through,” he said.
Police say they have not seen a major increase compared to last year, but there are still many games to go.
They are also hoping to get the word out about these scams now because it will help prevent people from being victimized.
