Mirror, mirror on the wall, who are the biggest swindlers of them all?
Three ticket thieves have been arrested for stealing the QR codes of more than 2,600 tickets to Disneyland Shanghai.
The gang of three included one employee, an IT service supplier for the ticket system, surnamed Bai. Between June 27 and July 20, Bai changed the dates on the QR codes of tickets, which he then passed off to scalpers Shen and Ding. [Coming soon, the story of the three habaneros evil brothers...].
Claiming to be innocent punters that were selling 'discounted tickets' through websites and WeChat, they sold the entrance stubs at a knockdown price of RMB280 versus the standard RMB499. The group made RMB490,000 profit from the scam which in turn caused losses of over RMB870,000 for Disney.
Officials only became aware of the problem when people with legitimately bought tickets started to be refused entry into the park after the QR codes they’d received were found to have already been used.
One such case included a group of school children who discovered that 33 of the 55 in their group were refused entry . The teacher, Mr. Fang, in charge of the trip was forced to fork out more than RMB16,000 to get entry to the park.
Fortunately, the flagship store Alitrip.com, where Fang bought the tickets showed the true Disney spirit by refunding him the cost of the tickets after it became clear what had happen.
Like something out of Detective Mickey’s playbook Pudong police were quick to use the IP address to track down Bai to his office where the tickets had been falsified. And like every Disney villain, Bai was quick to turn on his partners in crime who were later arrested too.
One thing is for sure, these three swindlers won't be singing ‘Hakuna Matata’ anytime soon.
[Image via Wonders of Disney]
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