Sports ticket scam; man charged for defrauding Wisconsin residents

MILWAUKEE - Federal prosecutors just reached a plea deal with a man from New York for wire fraud on Tuesday, Feb. 6.

They said he took around $100,000 from victims over three years, including one of the biggest sports nights Milwaukee has ever seen.

It was July 20, 2021, and a chance to witness history.

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If you didn’t have a ticket to see the Milwaukee Bucks win the NBA title, you just wanted a piece of the action.

And as federal court documents now show, a scammer did too.

"This is a big-ticket item. This is a big game, so absolutely, it doesn't surprise us at all," said Lisa Schiller with the Better Business Bureau of Wisconsin.

Between 2019 and 2022, federal prosecutors say 28-year-old Nikhil Mahtani of New York City posted on Craigslist more than a thousand times, offering tickets to sporting events that didn’t exist.

In one instance, a plea agreement said Mahtani took $3,500 on Venmo from a Neenah man who thought he’d bought 10 suite tickets for game six of the 2021 NBA Finals. He learned at the door at Fiserv Forum they were fake.

Schiller said there are a few things people can learn from the case, including how to pay and protect yourself.

"It sounds cliche, but it's the best advice we can give,"she said. "If it sounds too good to be true, it is. Wire transfer is an untraceable method of payment. If you pay with a credit card, you can dispute the charges if the business doesn't come through in the end."

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She also shared the importance of reporting fraud if it happens to you.

"Somebody would not be prosecuted had people not stepped forward and reported it," Schiller said.

Mahtani pleaded guilty to a single count of wire fraud. He faces up to 20 years in prison and could be fined up to $250,000 when he is sentenced in May.