Playoff tickets fetching big bucks on-line

By Tom Kirchofer, Associated Press writer

BOSTON -- The Boston police plan to be on the lookout for ticket scalpers today as the Yankees and Red Sox roll into Fenway Park for Game 3 of the American League Championship Series.

But it's still not clear if the long arm of the law will be able to grab people selling tickets on the Internet.

"The statute says that it's illegal," said James Borghasani, a spokesman for the Suffolk County district attorney's office. "But it becomes a question of how much of your resources you're going to devote to investigating this sort of crime when you have lots of other crimes."

Arresting and prosecuting on-line ticket scalpers can be a difficult proposition. The Internet offers a veil of anonymity for scalpers that can make them difficult to track. And Internet scalpers might be operating in states where it's legal to re-sell tickets.

The cheapest Red Sox playoff tickets have a face-value of $35 while the most expensive cost $65. Tickets are sold out at the box office, but many are available at on-line at auction sites like eBay.

By yesterday afternoon, a ticket to today's Fenway pitching showdown between Roger Clemens and Pedro Martinez was going for $600 on-line. Another seller offered a pair of tickets for $750. Many of the sellers listed locations in Massachusetts.

One eBay buyer earlier in the week reportedly paid $12,000 for four box seats to today's game.

An eBay spokesman said the company would remove from the Internet any auctions believed to be illegal, at the request of law enforcement officials. But he said he has never heard of a law enforcement agency ever making such a request.

"If a ticket sale is regarded as illegal, it would be against our user agreement and we would close down the auction immediately," said Kevin Pursglove, spokesman for the San Jose, Calif.-based company. "Because the laws that govern ticket scalping differ from state to state and city to city, we would work with law enforcement officials. If they brought to our attention any item they believed is violating a state or local law, we would close down the auction."

Pursglove said eBay had tried to contact law enforcement agencies in all the cities where baseball playoff games were taking place, but he wasn't sure of the nature of all the conversations.

But Timothy Shea, chief of the public protection bureau at the Massachusetts attorney general's office, said he spoke yesterday with eBay officials who agreed to post on their Web site a description of Massachusetts scalping laws.

"They have agreed to take down any (auctions) that appear to violate the law," Shea said.

But yesterday afternoon, the site still contained plenty of pitches from plenty of sellers who listed their locations as Massachusetts. Shea said sellers' descriptions of their locations might not be enough to get authorities and eBay to take action, because the only verifiable information eBay has about sellers is their e-mail addresses.

Scalpers in Massachusetts face a $500 fine for their first offense. A second offense carries a fine and a possible one-year jail term.

For scalpers who choose to ply their trade the old-fashioned way, Boston police spokesman Kevin Jones said officers will be patrolling near the ballpark.

"We'll have special scalping details," he said. "Plainclothes officers will be out in the Fenway Park area."