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Vikings Fans Miss Chargers Game Due To Invalid Tickets

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Nearly a dozen people with Vikings tickets missed Sunday's win over the San Diego Chargers. As it turns out, their tickets were not valid.

On weeknights, she patrols the streets of south Minneapolis. On Sundays, Officer Kim Lund patrols the windows of TCF Bank Stadium.

She says typically the San Diego game is not the busiest when it comes to fraudulent tickets.

"We have problems at Detroit, Chicago games and especially at the Packer game," she said.

But things certainly picked up. After driving four hours from Bemidji, Jamison St. Germain and his friends were told their tickets were no good.

"We just wanted to come watch our favorite team because we've never been to a game in our lives," he said.

It wasn't fraud, just confusion. The season ticket-holder owner accidentally voided the tickets he was selling. So they did get in, unlike others.

Nikki Goodsell of Rochester caught a bad sell.

"It wasn't through Craigslist or anything, it was through the actual StubHub We got to the gate initially to get into the gate and they told us these had been scanned," Goodsell said.

She and six friends bought tickets that were sold twice.

If you are the victims of a bad ticket, the Vikings can't just replace them, you either have to buy a new one if they're available or just head home.

Or to a bar, like Nikki and her friends did post-paperwork. Stubhub will refund the money, but the game went on without them.

"I'm going to be issuing the report through the U of M for theft by swindle," Officer Lund told Goodsell.

Officer Lund says her advice is simple.

"The only place you are guaranteed a seat at this venue is right at this ticket office or through the NFL ticket exchange with Ticketmaster," she said.

Other than that, she says when you buy a ticket you're placing a bet. Officer Lund says the worst scam of the day was via Craigslist - that victim was in tears.

Officer Lund knows several of the scalpers at TCF. She says if you buy a ticket at the door, the legit scalpers will escort you to the gate to make sure it gets scanned.

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