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Two young men from LA have pled guilty to selling bogus Comic-Con passes. The two advertised their counterfeit passes on Craigslist and sold them to two women for $120 each. The purchasers were dismayed to find the tickets were phony when they arrived at the show.

The charge is a misdemeanor and the criminals have been sentenced to pay a $750 fine, complete 10 days of public work service and pay restitution to the victims.

A couple of our own thoughts: $120 is not by any stretch of the imagination an outrageous amount to pay to get into the Con, so this wasn’t even outrageous price gouging. CCI officials have been dedicated in stating that buying tickets away from the con’s own ticketing system is risky for just such a reason — the prosecution shows that the city is also serious about cracking down.

Of course, with the con’s own troubles merely selling tickets to the 2011 show, demand and desires are going to soar even more — along with prices. StubHub has provided a safe, legal marketplace for the supply and demand of tickets at other sporting and concert events — people pay what the market will bear, and it’s often a lot. Is the same system an inevitability for Comic-Con?

1 COMMENT

  1. God, I hope not (Stubhub). That will only make things worse and worse and probably spell the end of SDCC as we know it. Think of all the people who have already given up this year and decided to go to C2E2, NYCC, or Emerald City instead.

    If that happens for SDCC, then it’s just a boon to other cons.

    At this rate, SDCC will eventually collapse under its own weight.

  2. The news story I watched on local San Diego TV said the passes were “two-day” badges for $120 each.

  3. Face it, true believer, soon this will be the only way to get into the Convention. It’s gonna be like a corrupt South American “democracy”, where a few elites get ahead at the expense of the masses. These passes will make us all illegal aliens, just trying to get to the dream.

  4. People buying tickets to “Comic-Con” should have to answer a simple trivia test to validate their purchase. Nothing too difficult and even scores above a certain percentage would be accepted. This way if you’re just going for the free shit and Twilight, for example, you can get your own damn convention some place else.

  5. Or they could stop giving out free stuff and not put on Twilight panels. Let’s face it, the monster perpetuates itself.

  6. Living in a corrupt South American “Democracy” whose military Regime was supported by the U.S.A. for more than 20 years…we don’t buy tickets we just turn up and see if they’ll let us in.

  7. one kinda off topic thing is that I read that the badges were too sophisticated to duplicate and are always scanned at the con. I’ve been going long enough to go from a badge I wrote my name on and never been scanned. Is this going to mean they’ll actually scan badges next year because passes will be so valuble?

  8. People who buy passes are e-mailed a barcode. They bring that barcode to the CCI registration area, where it is scanned and checked against their ID. At that point they receive their badge.