The match of a lifetime turned into an expensive nightmare for at least two Maltese fans who had no choice but to watch the game in a Berlin bar after they were conned by a fraudster.
The football fans both paid the Maltese conman a €500 deposit for the Juventus vs Barcelona Champions League final last night but the tickets were never supplied.
A senior police officer told The Sunday Times of Malta it is believed the man was a convicted fraudster who chose to go under a different name.
The investigator said he had heard of different variations of the scam, but all were portrayed by a man fitting the same physical description but under a different alias.
That was little consolation for the distraught men who said they had no choice but to watch the match on a big screen outside the stadium since they had already purchased flight tickets and hotel accommodation.
“It was too late to cancel our rooms and flights so we just came here as we didn’t want to throw away any more money.
“I was angry, now I’m trying to just forget about it and enjoy being here,” one of the fans who preferred not to be named, told The Sunday Times of Malta.
He said the tickets were advertised on a local trading website and that he knew of others who had bought legitimate tickets from other sellers on the same site. They had met with the man in a Ħamrun bar and discussed prices and even possible seat locations, as the fake ticket seller claimed to have access to several different tickets from a source in the UK. The lifelong Juventus fan said he had contacted his lawyer to inquire what could be done, and to his surprise he was told the law firm had already heard of the scam.
“My lawyer said this conman had tricked a group of lawyers who had also paid several hundred euros for tickets. Apparently everyone knows about him,” he said.
A lawyer who was contacted by this newspaper yesterday, and who fell for the scam himself, would only say that he was holidaying in Berlin.
Another Maltese fan said he had been shown what he was told was a legitimate ticket and then told his would be provided when it arrived from the UK.
“We had contact details and everything seemed set. Then the guy vanished. He wouldn’t answer our calls and his Facebook account went offline,” he said, speaking from his hotel room in Berlin a few hours before the match.
One source said the scam had been going on for some two weeks and at least a dozen people fell victim to it.
Questions sent to the police’s media relations unit remained unanswered by the time of writing.