Cops arrested three men in Surry Hills last Thursday on charges of attempting to swindle loose units. The trio of 18-year-olds, so the coppers claim, were selling counterfeit tickets for the upcoming Midnight Mafia, which is not actually a witching hour get-together of Australian crime families, but an all-night rave.
Officially, the threesome, all friends, have been charged with the following five offences: knowingly deriving material from a criminal group; publishing misleading material to obtain property; dishonestly obtain property by deception; dealing with property suspected of goods crime; and two counts of goods in personal custody suspected of being stolen.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that the police were alerted by organisers after members of the public posted to both the Midnight Mafia and Harder Styles United (the organiser) Facebook pages complaining about their forged tickets.
In fact, the triumvirate of crooks were so crafty that one of them even had earlier posted to the Midnight Mafia page asking if anyone had available tickets to the sold out event.
One purchaser of the dodgy documents,realised that she had been cheated after she noticed that her supposed tickets had a identification number on them greater than 2000, when there were only 2000 tickets sold in the first place.
Organisers also pointed out on their Facebook page that official tickets have a shiny ‘Ticketbooth’ logo, while alleged fakes do not; some punters have been helpful on describing other pointers:
If you believe you’ve been flogged a fictitious admission, directly contacting the organisers, Ticketbooth and/or the police is a good bet. If you’re feeling down about the whole thing, a bit of Scooter does a whole lot of good.
Midnight Mafia, featuring banging sets from Noisecontrollers, DJ Mad Dog, Darren Styles and Mark Breeze, takes place this Saturday night, beginning at 9pm and ending at 6am the following day, at the Homebush Showgrounds.
