PARKER, Colorado — Dozens of people have joined a Facebook group claiming they’re collectively owed more than $149,000 after a local event ticket broker stopped responding to them and appears to have paused her business.
Several people who bought tickets through Ticket Secrets, LLC contacted Steve On Your Side claiming they never got what they were owed and haven’t been able to get a refund.
In a July 5 post on the company’s Facebook page, the owner, Talia Yadgar, said she has retained legal counsel.
“To whomever has pending orders, a notice of further processing will be sent,” the post said. “Counsel has advised me not to discuss this until further notice.”
Kristin Denehy said she used the company for tickets for about five years without problems.
“You were guaranteed the tickets, but you weren't guaranteed them until 24 hours prior to the event in which you had purchased tickets for,” Denehy said.
She said she paid Yadgar $880 on Jan. 2 for tickets to see Billy Joel this past weekend at Coors Field.
On June 28, after a Morgan Wallen concert at Empower Field, Yadgar posted to the Ticket Secrets, LLC Facebook page that she was having a “huge family emergency.” She said she would be refunding everyone impacted.
Denehy, who said she was close with Yadgar, said she reached out to ensure she would get her tickets to see Billy Joel.
“She did tell me that she would indeed send me tickets to the Billy Joel concert that we had purchased tickets for, and I asked her again, I'm like, ‘you're going to send me the tickets?’ And she said, yes,” Denehy said.
But on July 3, she said Yadgar stopped responding.
“She changed her settings on Facebook on her personal page and on her business page,” Denehy said. “She wasn't viewing any more messages, she wasn't responding to anything.”
So Denehy decided to buy her own Billy Joel tickets for $600. She never got the $880 tickets she had purchased through Ticket Secrets.
Sophia Mendoza said she learned about Ticket Secrets from a friend. She said she used the service for months and made a couple of successful purchases. Then she decided to make a trade that never paid off.
“I had some Morgan Wallen tickets for the June 27 date,” Mendoza said. “And she posted something on Facebook that said: Does anyone want to exchange tickets for a future event?”
Mendoza said she traded in her $1,800 tickets because she had tickets to the following night’s concert. She exchanged the tickets for two other events and never got those tickets.
“This family emergency came up that she had posted about, and so she was unable to send out tickets for those two events,” Mendoza said. “So I figured, OK, future events, you know, it's fine.”
Then she said Yadgar stopped responding to her.
Mendoza is a moderator on the Facebook group “Action Against Ticket Secrets/Talia,” which as of the time this article was published, had more than 650 members. The group has compiled a spreadsheet of how much money individuals are owed. At the time of this posting, the total hovered around $149,000.
Richard Gross, an attorney representing Yadgar, told consumer investigator Steve Staeger that his client’s company plans to file for bankruptcy protection soon.
He blamed the sudden disruption of the business on two concerts that went horribly wrong for Yadgar’s business – Zach Bryan and Morgan Wallen, both at Empower Field at Mile High. The popularity of both shows made it difficult to execute her business model – waiting until the final hours before a concert to secure discounted tickets for her customers. In fact, Gross said, prices for those two concerts went way up before show time.
Gross said the family emergency that Yadgar posted about was the sudden disruption in her business. He said Ticket Secrets got way behind and stopped doing business. He said the company still has funds, but those funds have been frozen pending the bankruptcy filing.
One angry customer filed a report with the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, which resulted in a warrant for Yadgar’s arrest on suggested felony theft charges. Gross said that his client will handle the warrant when she returns to Colorado. He wouldn’t specify when that was.
Gross said Ticket Secrets has a lot of requests for refunds, but he said the number is less than the $149,000 suggested by the Facebook group.
Neither Mendoza nor Denehy know whether they’ll get their money back.
“I know in the end, there's so many of us that are owed money, that we're not never going to recoup the money that we've all lost,” Denehy said. “But I do think in the end that we deserve something out of this.”
“As a business owner myself, we have responsibilities," she said. "We have responsibilities to if we take money, we're guaranteeing a product and return.”
This story was the result of a tip to Steve On Your Side. Send tips to Consumer Investigator Steve Staeger.