Woman charged with fraud in alleged Ariana Grande ticket scam

El Paso Police have charged an Anthony, Texas woman with one count of fraud for allegedly selling fraudulent concert tickets to Ariana Grande’s Thursday, Oct. 15 show in El Paso.

El Paso Police are looking for other potential victims who may have bought tickets to Ariana’s El Paso concert on Craigslist or another resale site for floor tickets, row 48, seats 37-40.

The victims saw an ad on Craigslist offering floor seats for $100 per seat and arranged to meet the woman on April 16. The woman identified herself as Claudia Camacho at Del Valle High School.

Police later determined her name is Ruth Garcia, 29, of Anthony, Texas.

After buying the tickets from Garcia, the victims noticed some discrepancies on the tickets and attempted to contact Garcia using the telephone number she gave them prior to the transaction.

That number was disconnected and the victims became more suspicious of the validity of the tickets.

The victims filed a police report detailing the ticket purchase and their suspicions and about a week later the victims saw the same seats for sale again on Craigslist and set up another purchase in order to confront the seller.

The victims arranged to meet the seller at the Walmart in the 10700 block of Gateway West.

At the meet, the victims confronted Garcia who then attempted to hide inside the Walmart.

Police were called to the store and found Garcia.

Mission Valley police detectives continued to work the case and secured a warrant for the arrest of Garcia on a single count of Forgery.

Garcia was arrested and booked into the El Paso County Detention Facility on June 8.

Police investigators say they have learned that multiple sets of these same seats were printed and believe that there are other victims in our community.

If you purchased tickets for the Ariana Grande concert on Craigslist or another resale site related to Floor Row 48 seats 37-40 please contact the Mission Valley Regional Command Criminal Investigations Division at 915- 872-3656.

This isn’t the first time El Paso Police have warned about possible ticket scams related to big events in El Paso.

The 2009 Hyundai Sun Bowl between Oklahoma and Stanford sold out early and police warned of possible ticket scams involving sellers printing multiple tickets for the same seats and selling them several times.

The first one to get the tickets scanned at the gates gets into the concert, while others who bought the same ticket are turned away.

It was also a concern for police ahead of One Directon’s sold-out concert at the Sun Bowl in Sept. 2014.

“So what we want to do is we want to get out here a week prior, a couple of days prior and we want to make sure that the public is sure that if they are going to be purchasing resale tickets from anybody that they don’t know or anybody that they meet online, that it’s a ‘buyer beware’ type of situation,” El Paso Police spokesman Mike Baranyay told ABC-7 in Sept. 2014. “And just make sure that you’re cognizant and take the necessary precautions to make sure you have valid tickets.”

This is not to say everyone selling tickets second-hand are scammers but buyers should be aware what could happen.