Twisted con artist Amrik Gill, 23, from Chorlton in Greater Manchester advertised tickets for sale to Premier League football matches that he didn’t have or have any intention obtaining, during much of 2008 and 2009.
Despite being repeatedly arrested, charged, fined and sentenced to varying short terms of imprisonment he seems obsessed with defrauding football fans.
The method used was unsophisticated, but plausible enough to gullible fans desperate to see a game. Gill posted on numerous unofficial club sites and Facebook, essentially pretending to be a fan with spares. When the ticket hungry fans took the bait, he swerved the opportunity of face to face meetings and instead constructed an excuse, such as he had to head of for a wedding. He then would pass his bank details over the phone and assure the buyer that he would ‘express delivery’ the tickets.
The fan sites and forums all to a man posted warnings about him and banned him when his activities were uncovered.
Of course, he had no intention of selling anyone anything and never had any tickets at any stage. He was purely out to exploit a gap in the market.
Fans were ‘sold’ but never saw tickets for all manner of games, from Premiership matches for clubs including Manchester City, United, Liverpool and West Ham United to Cup Finals and even rock concerts. His favoured technique was to get people to buy two or three ‘tickets’ from him to bump the value of the deposits up to around the £200 mark.
The only saving grace in all of this was Gill’s stupidity in using his own private bank account, so once the Greater Manchester Police began to receive complaints, it was a simple enough process to capture him.
In the interests of fans financial good everywhere we suggest you only buy tickets from official outlets and from people you genuinely know personally.
Here is Amrik Gill, although the likelihood of you actually seeing Amrik should he try to defraud you is probably zero.
