Having your credit card nicked is never fun at the best of times, but imagine how terrible it would be to discover that not only was your credit card stolen but it was also used to buy 1,000 Barbra Streisand concert tickets. Banks would be turning you away for the of your natural life – not because of your lousy credit rating but because of your disastrous taste in music.
Sadly, it looks like this very thing has happened to an unsuspecting individual, as a stolen credit card was recently used to buy 1,000 tickets to the forthcoming Barbra Streisand national tour, meaning that Ticketmaster is frantically voiding Barbra Streisand tickets left right and centre. Who committed this crime? Nobody knows for sure, but the stereotype police are on the lookout for Jack from Will & Grace.
To call Barbra Streisand's forthcoming tour of America 'highly-anticipated' would be a massive understatement. Or an overstatement. Or completely spot-on. We don't know, we can't stand the bloody woman. But there's enough anticipation to see Barbra Streisand waddle onto a succession of stages and belt out the Yentl soundtrack while trying to appear slightly less out-of-touch than she actually is for some cheeky scamsters to try and pull off an audacious Barbra Streisand stunt.
According to reports, Ticketmaster has had to invalidate around 1,000 tickets for Barbra Streisand's tour after discovering that they were bought using a stolen credit card to be sold on over the internet. Sean Moriaty, president of Ticketmaster, said:
"It is a serious violation of the law to try to buy concert tickets using stolen credit card information and, when successful, to resell those tickets to unknowing consumer victims through resale Web sites."
Anyone who has bought some of the voided Barbara Streisand tickets should be contacted by Ticketmaster shortly, either to be scolded for trying to buy concert tickets from someone other than Ticketmaster or to be laughed at for wanting to go and see Barbra Streisand in the first place.
And as for the scamsters themselves, we have devised a cunning plan to catch them. If they have really bought 1,000 Barbra Streisand tickets, there's no way they'd miss a show for themselves. All the police have to do is create a sting, perhaps by inventing a Barbra Streisand Signs Your Stolen Credit Card night or something, and when the scammers turn up – bam! We have an idea for their punishment, too – it involves Barbra Streisand singing Wet, her 1979 concept album about water, from beginning to end and including hits like Splish Splash and Niagara, right into the criminals' faces. That'd be enough to put anyone off crime forever.
Read more:
Hundreds of Streisand fans lose tour tix – Newsday
[story by Stuart Heritage]
