For years, an online scammer trolled Craigslist peddling fake NFL and MLB tickets, swindling fans out of thousands of dollars for passes that turned out to be counterfeit.
When the NFL learned of the scam, they went to the NYPD and asked the Financial Crimes Task Force to tackle the crook. Leading the way in that effort was a dogged detective, Michael McCaffrey, a detective in the task force and an officer with Homeland Security Investigations.
In a recent interview with amNewYork Metro, McCaffrey spoke about how he was finally able to bring down the scammer — identified as Nikhil Mahtani of Manhattan.
McCaffrey explained that the NFL came to the NYPD with what they described as a huge uptick in ticket fraud. Customers had been left fuming when they arrived to watch a sporting event, only to be turned away after discovering they had purchased faux tickets.
“A lot of victims were purchasing tickets to go to NFL games. They were buying all these tickets on Craigslist. Ultimately, when these individuals went to call to pick up these tickets, they weren’t there — they never existed,” McCaffrey said. “I took it upon myself to look into what was going on. Is this one particular individual that was perpetrating these crimes? Is this more of an epidemic? What can we do?”
The investigation led police to the discovery of several IP addresses linked to a slew of posts on Craigslist advertising high-end tickets for sale. Each ad offered a similar message: A purportedly wealthy individual who could not make the advertised event was offering luxury boxes at pro sporting events for hundreds or even thousands of dollars at a time.
Mahtani, as McCaffrey pointed out, was allegedly meticulous not only in covering his tracks but also in selecting his marks.
“He was creating phone numbers used specifically for fraud, fake email addresses used specifically for fraud, and he was tying these to an array of peer-to-peer accounts and receiving the money that way, and then they were going to different bank accounts,” McCaffrey said. “He cast a wide net on Craigslist and he would see who would come back. If he was getting significant pushback from an individual, he would just ghost them or condescend them until they either sent the money or stopped talking to him.”
Investigators learned that the same had been going on since 2019, with scores of victims losing money for inauthentic VIP tickets.
But as with most criminals, the man behind the racket finally made one big mistake that led cops right to his doorstep.
“During one exchange between a victim and the suspect, the victim stated, ‘How do I know you’re a real person? Send me a picture of a selfie and a driver’s license,‘ and our suspect sends his selfie of himself with his real driver’s license. So, it’s pretty easy to tell who he was there. We focused on that individual,” McCaffrey said.
The photo led cops to Mahtani, who was allegedly bouncing between homes on the Lower and Upper East Sides. After four years and defrauding thousands of dollars, in 2023, law enforcement performed a search warrant at Mahtani’s home and took him into custody.
Incredibly, police discovered that Mahtani not only victimized residents of New York but also those looking to enjoy games in Wisconsin, California, Texas and other states, leading to charges there.
If he hadn’t been apprehended, McCaffrey believes, Mahtani could have made off with millions.
“We got over a thousand advertisements that Mahtani had posted requesting five tickets, $500 each. So, we did an aggregate amount of all that money, and then, adding it up, the total of all the advertisements that he had posted. He was looking to get about $2.6 million, maybe a little more. Obviously, he didn’t get all that, he wasn’t successful,” McCaffrey said. “We got his cell phones, we got his laptop. We subsequently did search warrants on these electronics, and we found an indication of fraud. We saw that he was creating these emails, we saw that he was receiving money. We even saw some communication between him and the victims.”
Mahtani was ultimately sentenced to 15 months in federal prison. Although he was behind bars, McCaffrey warned that the case serves as a warning for buyers looking to purchase tickets through Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace: There are other scammers trying to do the same thing.
