Police have arrested two men accused of selling forged tickets to the Super Bowl and other major sporting events. The suspects, Damon Daniels and Eugene Fladger, were allegedly caught with almost 80 counterfeit tickets to various games, including 36 Super Bowl tickets and tickets to swank private events like the NFL Commissioner’s Party at the Waldolf-Astoria Hotel. The potential value of the fake tickets was approximately $10,000, according to the NYPD.
The investigation began after the NFL’s Security Division informed the NYPD's Organized Crime Investigation Division of an alleged counterfeit football ticket production operation. Undercover investigators homed in on Daniels and Fladger, following them from a December handoff in the Bronx to another meeting in Queens that day. An undercover officer posing as a buyer met Fladger on an Astoria street corner that afternoon and bought eight tickets to game between the Redskins and the Cowboys in Maryland, paying $1,200 cash for eight forged tickets. The NYPD says the tickets had a face value of $175 each, so it would have been a bit of a deal... if the tickets weren't counterfeit.
After conducting another undercover ticket purchase from Fladger earlier this month, police allegedly observed Daniels with dozens of forged Super Bowl tickets and even some fake parking passes. Yesterday the NYPD arrested the two suspects at a White Castle in Queens. According to DA Richard Brown, Daniels's girlfriend allowed police to search her apartment, where they recovered a computer, a printer, a package of photo-grade paper, two tickets to the Super Bowl printed on the same photo-grade paper and a bag of half ripped, incomplete, first draft tickets which appeared to be printed on normal stock paper.
Prosecutors say Daniels, 43, admitted to forging the tickets at a Kinkos in Manhattan. He's charged with Counterfeiting. Fladger, 32, is charged with Trademark Counterfeiting and Possession of a Forged Instrument.
“The defendants are charged with not only running a lucrative illegal operation that allegedly ripped off the National Football League and sports fans alike by manufacturing well-crafted counterfeit tickets using state-of-the-art equipment but creating a security nightmare for the NFL and the vast army of local, state and federal enforcement law agencies handling security operations at this Sunday’s Super Bowl by allegedly selling fraudulent parking passes to the MetLife parking facilities," DA Brown said in a statement [pdf]. "Beyond that, individuals who bought tickets or passes through the Internet may be in for a rude awakening on game day.”
Luckily, there are still plenty of great Super Bowl deals out there!
