So being the savvy little sports fan that I am decided that it would be a nice investment to go ahead and buy some season tickets for my college football team.  They're pretty legit and I know that I could sell them for a profit.   If only the right deal came along in order to buy season tickets, I was going to jump on it.  Seems easy enough, buy the tickets for face value, list them, and then make some money--pretty much the college student’s dream job as far as little work, large return. 

So I go to the source that any other college student would go to--craig's list.  I end up finding this really good deal for 4 season tickets on about the 30 yard line or so for $1700.  The description said that he bought them but had to move away and could no longer use them and at this point he just wanted what he paid for them.  So needless to say, I was psyched out of my mind to get four tickets together, on the 30 yard line, AND for face value.  I immediately shoot this guy an email in hopes of snatching up this gem before anyone else gets a hold of these tickets.  After about 15 minutes or so I get a reply and for the next couple hours we exchanged several emails detailing how this would all go down.  The last of which was an email from him talking about this company by the name of Square Trade.  He said that we were going to use this company as an insurance policy so that if either one of us backed out of the deal, the other person would not be out of luck because we would be doing business through this company.  At this point, I’m just extremely pleased because any hint of suspicion, was completely wiped out by this reassuring email.  

So I receive an email from Square Trade with all of this guys “information” and a list of steps that I needed to follow in order to get the tickets.  Now having this email, I go ahead and begin to the process and wire the money to this individual Saturday night.  

At that point, the only thing I could do was sit and wait for my tickets to come in the mail.  I waited until about Wednesday or so and I shot the guy an email.  Before hand, he was very good about emailing me back within the hour but I was a bit nervous because I didn’t receive an email back from him at all, let alone within the hour.  So it gets to Thursday, and Friday and finally when Saturday rolls around and I haven’t heard back from him and I haven’t received the tickets yet, so I decide to
take things into my own hands.  I took a little visit down to the local police department and talked to a lady about my situation.  She told me that I should call this hotline and they would be of much more help to my situation.   

So I get back to my place and call up this hotline.  To my heart’s displeasure they confirm that I was indeed a victim of internet fraud and that I would never see those tickets nor my money again.  They told me that the email that I got from square trade was a fake and had just been done by an expert who had enough experience with html in order to pass it off as official to the untrained eye. 

They say that there are five stages of grief for death and dying.  Well I suppose, in a sense, I viewed this as a death to my bank account because I definitely have endured the five stages.  I have currently come to an acceptance of all of this but nonetheless it’s especially hard to stomach such a hit, especially coming from a college kid but also coming from a family where money isn’t plentiful and we have to work for everything we’ve got.  I know that everything happens for a reason, and I’ve since learned how to live life much more simply but to get this scholarship would be such a blessing and while this wouldn’t recoup the full amount, it would no doubt brighten a seemingly dismal experience.