IPL ticket scam: Cops arrest five men for selling fake tickets

1. On Friday, the Marine Drive police arrested five men for allegedly printing, designing and selling fake Indian Premier League tickets to the cricket-lovers going to watch the match at Wankhede stadium.

2. The arrested accused, identified as Pravin Naik, Ketan Dhavre, Ibrahim Khan, Hitesh Ved and Namdeo Dedge, would target fans outside Wankhede who were not able to get the tickets due to unavailability at the stadium’s box-office.

3. The cops said that 28-year-old Pravin Naik was the mastermind behind the scam. He designed the fake tickets using CorelDraw, printed 560 copies and handed them over to his partners. Cops managed to expose the scam one month after a man, on April 28, registered a complaint against an unknown person for selling him fake tickets.

4. The complainant, after learning that no tickets were available for the Mumbai Indians (MI) vs Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) match last month, was heading back to work when a person approached him and sold him five tickets at their original price. Later, the victim was denied entry into the stadium after officials informed him that the barcode scanner was unable to identify the barcodes on the tickets. That’s when the victim realized he had been sold fake tickets and decided to file a complaint.

5. The victim gave the police a facial description of the man who had sold the tickets, on the basis of which a sketch was prepared. The sketch helped the cops nab the accused, who led them to the rest. The Marine Drive police have seized 70 fake tickets and a laptop from Naik. It was also found that around 150 people possessing fake tickets were turned away from the April 28 match between MI and KKR.