INDIANAPOLIS— A Pacers season-ticket holder says he’s out more than $1,000 after getting locked out of his StubHub account and he’s warning others to be cautious about where they buy and sell tickets.
“I literally was about to faint in my living room,” Douglas Pankop said.
Pankop told us he discovered the problem when he tried to remove tickets he had listed for sale.
“I went to take some tickets down that I had sold potentially, and I couldn’t get access to my StubHub,” he said.
When he attempted to reset his password, the emails never arrived. He said he eventually got into his profile through an old ticket listing for a Thunder game.
“It allowed me inside my profile, and that’s when I noticed someone had compromised my profile, changed my email, my phone number,” he said.
He also noticed $1,100 from a recent ticket sale was gone.
“That amount was routed to a generic email address to a PayPal account, and I’m definitely not Jack Smith. My name’s Douglas,” he said.
Pankop says scammers also attempted to buy World Series tickets, Bears tickets and seats to several other NFL games. There were also pending orders he could have been responsible for.
“Anyone that knows about StubHub, when you don’t send them to the buyer, in this instance, StubHub reserves the right; their policy is they can charge me up to four times the amount.”
Pankop immediately called his bank and shut down the card linked to his account.
“My procedure of keeping a limited amount on my personal account saved me from this,” he said.
Jennifer Adamany with the Better Business Bureau said scams like this are reported from time to time.
“We have heard reports related to this type of scam. To say it’s common, it happens,” she said.
Adamany said the first step is to alert the ticket platform.
“Report it with the BBB, attorney general’s office, anywhere you can to get the word out because knowledge is power, and the more people know, the more can be done about it,” she said.
Experts recommend using strong passwords and enabling multi factor authentication. Users can check whether their email has been compromised through the website Have I Been Pwned.
“Take that into consideration and change your passwords,” Adamany said.
Pankop said he has called StubHub several times over the past week and a half but has not received a return call.
“It makes me feel real frustrated,” he said. “I’m not like anybody who speculates and puts tickets online. I own my own tickets so I work really hard."
We reached out to StubHub and shared details about his case.
“We’re actively investigating this matter and working directly with the customer to secure their account," a StubHub spokesperson said. "StubHub takes account security extremely seriously, and we have zero tolerance for fraud on our platform. In the rare instance an issue does occur, our FanProtect Guarantee ensures fans are fully protected—we’ll always make it right.”
