Security upped after $22K of Neil Diamond tickets purchased illegally

Organisers believe about 160 tickets for Neil Diamond's 2018 Napier concert were purchased fraudulently. Photo / Greg Bowker

More than $20,000 worth of tickets to Neil Diamond's 2018 Hawke's Bay concert have been bought with stolen credit cards.

Tickets went on sale last week for the 2018 Mission Concert before organisers discovered around $22,000 worth of transactions were made with stolen cards - equating to about 160 tickets.

SEL Mission Concert director Garry Craft said organisers had measures to identify this kind of activity, after tickets for the 2017 Dixie Chicks Mission Concert were also bought fraudulently.

"We put systems in place that allowed us to flag... particularly international sales and then it looks for multiple use of the same credit card number under different registrations."

This meant organisers were quickly alerted to about $22,000 worth of transactions made fraudulently. It was believed many of the tickets were then listed online for resale.

Although $125 general admission tickets were the only ones left, when tickets first went on sale they ranged up to $618 for "prestige" seating.

Craft said they were aware of three people who had paid for tickets on the website Viagogo, which was being investigated by the Commerce Commission and is being prosecuted by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

"The tickets will not be honoured, they're stolen, they don't exist," Craft said.

Organisers did not expect the number of fraudulent purchases to rise, as further security had been added so only people in Australia or New Zealand could buy tickets online. International fans could contact SEL for tickets.

Craft reminded fans to only buy tickets from official sites, like Ticketek and the Mission Estate website.

"We can deal with it as an orgnisation but the public need to understand not to buy tickets from the guy in the pub, or websites like Viagogo who sell tickets to a show in New Zealand and charge you in euros and don't deliver."

Anoyone who had bought tickets "could go to their own bank and try to cancel the authority to purchase, to see if their bank will refund their money", Craft said.

If the transaction had gone through, getting the money back would be "a lot more difficult".
Mission Estate CEO Peter Holley did not respond to requests for comment.

The Mission Concert will be on Saturday March 17.