‘What do we do now?’: People drive hours for fake concert at Pittsburgh-area church

PITTSBURGH — Over the last 24 hours, several people reached out to Channel 11, asking us to get to the bottom of a concert scam in the Pittsburgh area.

“I got all the information right away… you wouldn’t second guess it,” Jennifer Perry told Channel 11.

Perry didn’t think twice about buying tickets to a concert after she saw ads online for a Biggie and 2Pac live orchestra concert at a church now called 25 Carrick. She bought the tickets in February.

“It all seemed very legit. The second I made the payment, I got the confirmation numbers, the tickets with the codes, and all that stuff on it,” she said.

But when she got to the venue this weekend, the church was locked.

“We rolled up after sitting in traffic for 45 minutes. You go to the venue, and there’s a sign on the door saying that there’s no event. It’s a whole big scam,” she said.

It’s a similar story for Michele Neff. She bought her tickets months ago and drove all the way to Carrick from West Virginia.

“There was nobody there. Really. It was an empty parking lot. [I thought] What do we do now? We just drove to Pittsburgh, and now we have to find something else to do,” Neff said.

The sign on the door said in part “This event is suspected to be part of a widespread scam, carried out by an entity called ARB Marketing. The company has shut down any means of contact, leaving customers and venues with no resources for further information.”

“They’re either closed or don’t exist. Anything you reach out to gets kicked back. It literally leads you nowhere,” Perry said.

The website no longer exists, and when we found a number for the company, it disconnected immediately.

“If you’re going to be going to these events that are different, either know the venue, check with the venue that this is existing, go through Ticketmaster or one of the big companies,” she said.

The state attorney general’s office is reportedly looking into this scam.

Download the FREE WPXI News app for breaking news alerts.

Follow Channel 11 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch WPXI NOW

©2024 Cox Media Group