Beware of the Fake Food Festival

Beware of the Fake Food Festival Have you an appetite for the occasional food festival? So do fraudsters, who have been serving up a new twist on credit card scams. Here’s how the fake food festival fraud works: Scammers advertise a taste-bud-tantalizing smorgasbord through social-media sites, known and trusted companies like Groupon, and local radio stations and newspapers. The advertisements appear genuine and the ticket prices are mouthwatering: A Facebook invitation to a food festival touted $49 tickets for all-you-can-eat crab, salad, pasta, bread, and desserts at a recent “Hot Garlic Crab Feed Houston” or $99 for VIP tickets that offered an additional helping of steak. Food festival fans clicked on the link to buy tickets and tapped in their credit card number. But when they showed up at the “location” of the food festival, there was nothing there: no event, no festival, and no explanation. The only sign of the “food festival” was a crowd of similarly confused ticket holders. Refunds? Forget about it. Over the past three months, “Hot Garlic Crab Feed,” “The Super Crab Festival,” and “The Dungeness Crab Association” and similarly questionable events have been touted in 21 cities around the United States. The fake festivals started in the San Francisco Bay Area, moved south to Los Angeles, spread to Phoenix and Houston, and are currently being marketed in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Philadelphia.  Uncover the Fake Food Festival While you can always battle fraudulent charges with the help of your bank or credit card company, it’s best to avoid being suckered in the first place. Protect yourself by taking precautions: Examine the ticketing website. Does it look professional or slapdash? Some of the words on the dungenesscrabassociation.com page, for example, are truncated and there are enough grammatical mistakes scattered throughout the linked pages that your scam antenna should tingle. Suspect the redirect. When you click on a link for a food festival be suspicious if you’re redirected to an unrelated site to “buy” tickets. Check the contact information. In the case of a fake festival, the telephone number wouldn’t work. The email address would bounce back your inquiry back.   Fraudsters are always looking for new ways to trick you. Stay alert and do your research before handing over your credit card number for a fake food festival.  Consumer Reports has no relationship with any advertisers on this website. Copyright © 2006-2016 Consumers Union of U.S.

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