Rebecca Cornwell sent $1,000 on Sunday for two Stanley Cup Final tickets and then started worrying the seats might never show up. By around 2 p.m., the Greensboro fan who regularly drives an hour and 15 minutes to Raleigh for Hurricanes games was pressing the person she had dealt with on Facebook for answers.
Cornwell had hoped to get into Game 1 at Lenovo Center after the Carolina Hurricanes clinched their spot in the Stanley Cup Final. She logged on over the weekend and said she was about 7,000th in line. When she reached the front, the cheapest seats she saw were at least $650, and the resale market was even worse, with prices she said were at least $1,000.
That is what pushed her into Carolina Hurricanes Verified Tickets Exchange, a Facebook group with more than 10,000 members that also posted advice on how fans could avoid scams. Cornwell said she connected with the group’s administrator, Sandy Stamper, who told her a verified seller had two tickets to Game 1 for $500 each and that Stamper would act as the middleman. Cornwell said she was told to send the money to Stamper, who would get the tickets through Ticketmaster, forward them to her and then pass the payment to the seller.
The setup looked orderly enough to lower the guard of someone already beaten back by official ticket demand. Instead, Cornwell said she sent the money at 11:37 a.m. Sunday and expected the tickets shortly afterward, only to grow concerned and message Stamper by around 2 p.m. The group’s own warnings about scams did not stop the transaction from moving forward, and Cornwell says she was still left waiting after paying.
The episode captures the scramble around the Hurricanes’ trip to the Stanley Cup Final, when fans who had no trouble finding advice online found it much harder to find a safe way into the building. Whether Cornwell gets the two tickets she paid for, or sees the $1,000 again, is the unanswered piece that now matters most.
