Fraud leaves bitter taste

Taste of Huntington Beach organizers are bewildered after discovering that about 200 counterfeit tickets to the event were sold, potentially spiriting away more than $11,000 in funds meant for city children’s programs.

“I’ve gone from shock to tears to just downright being angry,” event chairwoman Erika Reardon said.

Police are now investigating who created and sold tickets for the April 26 event for $20 each; their asking price was $52 to $60.

Patrons at the annual event sample foods and beverages from local restaurants, wineries and breweries. Proceeds benefit the children’s wing of Huntington Beach Central Library and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Huntington Valley.

Huntington Beach police Lt. Russell Reinhart said 184 false tickets have been reported to date.

“The loss was $11,040 as it was reported to us,” Reinhart said. “Right now, there’s nobody in custody or anything, but it’s an ongoing investigation.”

“We have complete faith in the police department,” Reardon said. “In the end, we’re just glad that we figured it out.”

Reardon said organizers got a tip after the event that people were selling tickets for $20 each.

Reinhart didn’t specify how the tickets were sold, as the investigation is still proceeding, but confirmed they were hard-copy tickets, rather than online ticket printouts.

Organizers were more worried about the online sales than paper tickets, Reardon said, because online ticketing was a new feature this year.

“We never thought to scrutinize the paper tickets,” she said. “But we tried to think like the bad guys when it came to the online ones. We were kind of proud of ourselves about that.”

Each real ticket sold had a serial number; organizers noticed that some of the false tickets sold had duplicate numbers, but others were sequentially numbered. It seemed that the tickets with lower numbers were better quality than later copies, Reardon said.

“They tried really hard at the beginning, and it looks like they slacked off toward the end,” she said.

At-the-door sales were down due to the economy, so the vendors didn’t run out of food due to the counterfeit ticket holders, Reardon said.

“We didn’t have any shortage on food at all this year. Fortunately, we got lucky on some aspects. It didn’t affect the food, and it didn’t affect the overall atmosphere of the event,” she said.

But most importantly, the library and clubs may be out of luck unless funds are recovered from the perpetrators, Reardon said.

“The children’s library uses the money for all kinds of things, everything from books to replacing the carpeting last year,” she said. “This year, the need is greater than ever, and here we’ve got this person doing this horrible thing.”

The Taste is the facility’s main fundraiser, with 80% of event proceeds benefiting it, said Gail Page of the Friends of the Children’s Library.

Reardon said organizers are still debating whether it’s probable that counterfeit ticket buyers would have paid full price to attend the event.

“We keep going back and forth on that,” she said. “The ticket sales overall were down; we expect that. With the economy the way it is, it wasn’t a surprise. We don’t necessarily blame the folks who bought the fake tickets. Maybe they had good intentions.”

But for next year, organizers are looking at security options such as bar codes, scanners and holograms, which seemed too costly in the past.

Anyone who has information on the counterfeit ticketing scheme is urged to call Sgt. Greg Davis at (714) 536-5948.

Reporter CANDICE BAKER can be reached at (714) 966-4631 or at [email protected].