RoseColored97
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jul 2, 2022
- Messages
- 791
Info: Oogie Boogie Bash Scam
The Oogie Boogie Ticket scams have been so fascinating to read up on. It is a legit huge scam and I am almost impressed. I read case reports of these types of online scams all the time in my line of work and I'm not sure if I've ever seen something so sophisticated (most of the ones I've seen are puppy sale scams from Facebook, but not something this widespread with so many victims). All this to say it is horrible and tons of people lost a lot of money, but it is fascinating to read.
From what I've been able to gather, there is potentially one scammer (maybe more working together) who is believed to be in a foreign country (one of the people who was scammed under the profile of "Laurie Coffey" called via Facebook Messenger and it was a male with a heavy accent). He created many fake FB profiles that have pretty elaborate backstories to them. Most of the Facebook profiles have tons of photos that appear to have been added on different dates, but upon closer look, the date was manipulated via Facebook to look like it was added on a previous date (ex. All photos were added on February 1st of this year, but the dates were set back to September 2021, December 2020, etc - see a couple of the photos below). I assume he is stealing multiple photos of families from legit Instagram or Facebook pages that have tagged Disney in some way, basically "catfishing", which is terrible. I believe so far people have uncovered 12 fake profiles, all of which look legit at first glance.
The scammer is having people pay via Zelle and PayPal with the Friends and Family option, which almost guarantees that PayPal can do nothing to intervene. Once people pay, they are sent a fake confirmation from DisneylandOnlineTickets@gmail.com that looks legit until you call Disney and confirm that the confirmation is not associated to any tickets. People are posting that they have been scammed out of $507, $636, $318, etc.
I talked about this in the past post, but I believe the main FB site was a front in order to develop a trust with the 10K members of that group. That group has a lot of side talk about experiences at Oogie Boogie Bash, questions on the party, tips, etc. But, all of the admins are fake profiles. When tickets went on sale on the 29th, there were a lot of people stating that they were getting in through the loophole on the app. There were also many offers by seemingly legitimate people to purchase tickets for others. From my understanding, people were sending the info to their Disney online accounts (email, password) so these other people with an "in" to the site could purchase for them.
There had also been a previous offer by one of the admins to help people purchase tickets with the promise of a confirmation sent to their email. When the whole ticket fiasco happened, there were a lot of people panicking because so many people said there were getting through the loophole. I think that site took advantage of that panic and those that would be more skeptical of these types of posts and offers to purchase became desperate and ignored the red flags because of the false sense of panic. Yes, some people did get in to get tickets (legitimate people here on the DIS said they were able to purchase tickets) but I believe there were not as many as I/we thought possibly due to the manufactured panic created by that group.
Another offer from one of the admins was to help people sell their duplicate tickets from when they were purchased in error. I am leaning towards the theory that some of the tickets for sale on eBay (at double to triple the face value) could be these tickets that were sent to the Admins with the promise of resale. It is possible that they are the ones selling on eBay because they have a legitimate ticket code. Whoever purchases these tickets on eBay, if this is what is happening, won't know they were sold to multiple people or were used previously until they get to the gates and are denied entry. Disney may be able to confirm they are real tickets on the phone before the party date, but unless you are the first person that purchased the tickets to use them at the gate it will say the tickets were already used for entry.
Not much law enforcement can do for those who have already been scammed, especially if the person responsible is located outside of the United States. But - just wanted to put this up again as a warning against purchasing tickets like these from any third party besides Disney (this includes Facebook, eBay, Reddit, etc). The scams are becoming way too advanced and more sophisticated.
A few of the fake Facebook profiles. It is heartbreaking that these are obviously real photos of families that are being used to scam and manipulate others:
More details can also be found on the site that many people who got scammed are part of (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1037543267212626)
Date of December 26, 2021 but added on January 1st, 2023
Date of August 23, 2020 but added on January 3
The Oogie Boogie Ticket scams have been so fascinating to read up on. It is a legit huge scam and I am almost impressed. I read case reports of these types of online scams all the time in my line of work and I'm not sure if I've ever seen something so sophisticated (most of the ones I've seen are puppy sale scams from Facebook, but not something this widespread with so many victims). All this to say it is horrible and tons of people lost a lot of money, but it is fascinating to read.
From what I've been able to gather, there is potentially one scammer (maybe more working together) who is believed to be in a foreign country (one of the people who was scammed under the profile of "Laurie Coffey" called via Facebook Messenger and it was a male with a heavy accent). He created many fake FB profiles that have pretty elaborate backstories to them. Most of the Facebook profiles have tons of photos that appear to have been added on different dates, but upon closer look, the date was manipulated via Facebook to look like it was added on a previous date (ex. All photos were added on February 1st of this year, but the dates were set back to September 2021, December 2020, etc - see a couple of the photos below). I assume he is stealing multiple photos of families from legit Instagram or Facebook pages that have tagged Disney in some way, basically "catfishing", which is terrible. I believe so far people have uncovered 12 fake profiles, all of which look legit at first glance.
The scammer is having people pay via Zelle and PayPal with the Friends and Family option, which almost guarantees that PayPal can do nothing to intervene. Once people pay, they are sent a fake confirmation from DisneylandOnlineTickets@gmail.com that looks legit until you call Disney and confirm that the confirmation is not associated to any tickets. People are posting that they have been scammed out of $507, $636, $318, etc.
I talked about this in the past post, but I believe the main FB site was a front in order to develop a trust with the 10K members of that group. That group has a lot of side talk about experiences at Oogie Boogie Bash, questions on the party, tips, etc. But, all of the admins are fake profiles. When tickets went on sale on the 29th, there were a lot of people stating that they were getting in through the loophole on the app. There were also many offers by seemingly legitimate people to purchase tickets for others. From my understanding, people were sending the info to their Disney online accounts (email, password) so these other people with an "in" to the site could purchase for them.
There had also been a previous offer by one of the admins to help people purchase tickets with the promise of a confirmation sent to their email. When the whole ticket fiasco happened, there were a lot of people panicking because so many people said there were getting through the loophole. I think that site took advantage of that panic and those that would be more skeptical of these types of posts and offers to purchase became desperate and ignored the red flags because of the false sense of panic. Yes, some people did get in to get tickets (legitimate people here on the DIS said they were able to purchase tickets) but I believe there were not as many as I/we thought possibly due to the manufactured panic created by that group.
Another offer from one of the admins was to help people sell their duplicate tickets from when they were purchased in error. I am leaning towards the theory that some of the tickets for sale on eBay (at double to triple the face value) could be these tickets that were sent to the Admins with the promise of resale. It is possible that they are the ones selling on eBay because they have a legitimate ticket code. Whoever purchases these tickets on eBay, if this is what is happening, won't know they were sold to multiple people or were used previously until they get to the gates and are denied entry. Disney may be able to confirm they are real tickets on the phone before the party date, but unless you are the first person that purchased the tickets to use them at the gate it will say the tickets were already used for entry.
Not much law enforcement can do for those who have already been scammed, especially if the person responsible is located outside of the United States. But - just wanted to put this up again as a warning against purchasing tickets like these from any third party besides Disney (this includes Facebook, eBay, Reddit, etc). The scams are becoming way too advanced and more sophisticated.
A few of the fake Facebook profiles. It is heartbreaking that these are obviously real photos of families that are being used to scam and manipulate others:
More details can also be found on the site that many people who got scammed are part of (https://www.facebook.com/groups/1037543267212626)
Date of December 26, 2021 but added on January 1st, 2023
Date of August 23, 2020 but added on January 3
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. These are all "influencers" (or people who think they are) who rushed things out for views and didn't fact check.
