Recently, several residents from Changsha and Xiangtan have reported that since 2018, they have been purchasing concert tickets through a staff member named Li at the Changsha Concert Hall. However, after Li collected the money for the tickets, he disappeared. It has been revealed that seven victims have been scammed out of over 36,000 yuan in total.
One victim, Xiaotao, shared with Pengpai News that she met Li, a staff member of the ticketing department at the Changsha Concert Hall, on November 29, 2018, when she purchased concert tickets in person at the ticket office. “He was at the front desk of the ticket center at the concert hall, dressed in work clothes, wearing a name tag with his name on it. He asked me to add him on WeChat for easy ticket purchases in the future.”
Xiaotao mentioned that at that time, the Changsha Concert Hall had not yet launched online ticket booking services through WeChat official accounts. On April 1, 2019, Li added her to a WeChat group named “Changsha Concert Hall Member Service Group 1,” with over two hundred members, including another staff member from the concert hall. Therefore, after adding Li on WeChat, she started transferring money through WeChat to Li to purchase concert tickets at the Changsha Concert Hall, never suspecting Li.
In 2021, when Xiaotao heard that the Shanghai Rainbow Chorus was coming to perform in Changsha, she and others bought 2 tickets for 680 yuan each from Li, but the performance was postponed due to the pandemic. In 2022, when the chorus was scheduled to perform in Changsha again, Xiaotao bought 4 tickets from Li, but the show was canceled once more. Subsequently, Xiaotao and her friends continued to purchase tickets for the Rainbow Chorus performances from Li, spending over four thousand yuan in total over 6 occasions.
Aside from the Rainbow Chorus, Xiaotao mentioned that Li also fabricated ticket prices and performance dates for Wang Yujia’s piano solo concert in December 2023. She purchased tickets for Wang Yujia’s concert twice in July 2023, paying over three thousand yuan in total, only to later be informed that her tickets were taken by Li’s colleague.
Xiaotao stated that besides the issues with purchasing tickets for the Rainbow Chorus and Wang Yujia concerts, the rest of the events had tickets successfully issued. Therefore, it was not until December 2023 that she discovered something was amiss and requested a refund from Li, but he kept making excuses. In March 2024, Xiaotao contacted the Changsha Concert Hall, only to find out that Li had left his position a year ago.
According to Li’s resignation certificate provided by the Changsha Concert Hall, Li started working on October 22, 2018, and resigned on March 31, 2023.
Chat screenshots shown by several victims indicated that even after leaving his job, Li continued to send victims seating charts from the ticketing system that only internal personnel from the concert hall could access, allowing victims to select seats. Li only disbanded the “Changsha Concert Hall Member Service Group 1” on December 1, 2023. Nearly ten thousand yuan in fraudulent ticket payments were made after Li left his job.
One victim, Fangfang, contacted Li for a refund, to which he responded, “You can get your money back from the concert hall. I handed all the money over to the concert hall.” However, when Fangfang visited the concert hall, she was informed that it was Li’s personal actions and not related to the concert hall.
On March 15, 2024, Xiaotao reported the case to the Hongshanqiao Police Station of the Kaifu Sub-bureau of Changsha Public Security Bureau. During the process of seeking justice, Xiaotao met six other victims, with a total of over 36,000 yuan being scammed from these seven individuals. In addition to this, after Xiaotao shared her experience of being scammed while purchasing tickets at the Changsha Concert Hall on social media, she discovered that at least three more people had also fallen victim to this scam.
Another victim, Xiaogang, mentioned, “His deception lies in the fact that for actual performances, if he couldn’t provide the tickets, he would usually offer refunds. But for those fictitious concerts that were to take place months later, we often didn’t realize until later, and by the time we noticed something was wrong and tried to contact him, he had disappeared.”
On December 16, Pengpai News contacted the person in charge of the ticketing center at the Changsha Concert Hall regarding this matter. The response from the responsible person was that this was Li’s personal behavior and not related to the concert hall, and the concert hall had not approached Li nor filed a report.
However, despite Xiaotao and Fangfang reporting the case, the police have yet to provide any updates on the investigation.