Did you catch the John Deutzman report last Thursday on MyFoxNY about counterfeit Yankees tickets?

Some kid from Long Island bought a bunch of Yankees tickets, back in March, off eBay, for the Red Sox/Yankees series recently played at the Stadium. If I recall correctly, he bought them off an eBay seller named “Lee Irving” (who had a very positive seller rating). They were “print at home” tickets and not the actual tickets that you get from the Yankees.

As it turned out, the kid couldn’t make it to the games. So, he sold the tickets to a broker in Massachusetts who runs bus trips for Red Sox fans to come to Yankee Stadium. However, when the tour guys arrived at the game, they were informed that the tickets were counterfeit.

According to the Deutzman report, a updated check on the eBay seller showed that the guy (Lee Irving?) had his rating drop – quite a bit – since March with many people leaving comments that he was selling counterfeit tickets.

Here’s what Deutzman found out: The seller registered with eBay using a bogus mailing address. And, he was photo-copying the black-and-white “print at home” tickets and selling the same game-tickets to multiple parties.

Now that tickets (albeit “print at home” ones or “real” tickets) have bar-codes on them, the minute they are scanned at the Stadium, that “seat” is marked gone. So, in this case, the first person to show up with the ticket (from the bogus seller) got into the Stadium. And, every person after that, with the dupe-ticket and the same bar-code, got flagged as having counterfeit tickets.

In this story, the Massachusetts broker worked with the Yankees and got his tour people into other seats for the game. And, Deutzman worked with eBay to get the Long Island kid his money back – even though it was way past eBay’s policy on helping out. And, the kid then gave the money back to the Sox tour broker.

Still, there’s a warning out of this story…and it’s this: If you’re going to buy Yankees tickets from someone, and they’re the “print at home” kind, make sure that you truly know the person that you’re buying from…or else run the risk of falling prey to the photo-copy scam that this guy on eBay was running. It’s easy money for these crooks. Reportedly, this guy (Lee Irving?) made thousands of dollars selling these Yankees tickets – and he has yet to be found.