An Orlando man's UCF tickets are transferred to Ticketmaster without his permission

An Orange County man had tickets to one of the hottest sporting events in Central Florida.

Four days before the UCF-Colorado football game, the tickets were suddenly transferred from Andrew McCoy's account to a stranger without his permission.

When he woke up, he received an email from Ticketmaster with the message:

“Your ticket transfer is on the way to the baby!”

And then a minute later:

“Big Jugg has accepted your ticket transfer!”

The messages were sent at 12:30 a.m. while he was sleeping. He claimed a Ticketmaster employee assured him over the phone that they would help him get his tickets back.

Read: Man accused of impersonating officer in armed robbery at hotel, Orlando police say

But he showed us online chats from later in the week in which he asked:

“Will this be sorted out before the game on Saturday?”

Ticketmaster replied: “Your order is still being reviewed. Please wait for the update from our fulfillment team.”

But this update didn't come before the game.

Read: American Red Cross: Help those affected by Hurricanes Milton and Helene

“They didn’t care,” McCoy said. “And I approached them as nicely as I could to let them know the game was this Saturday. I just want to go to the game.”

During a quick search, dozens of Ticketmaster customers reported that they, too, had tickets stolen from their accounts.

Numerous complaints were filed in the months following Ticketmaster's massive data breach in May, which saw the personal information of up to 500 million customers stolen.

As part of a statement, Ticketmaster wrote:

“Our digital ticketing innovations have significantly reduced fraud compared to the days of paper tickets and duplicate PDFs. Thanks to this digital history, we are also able to investigate the situation and restore fans’ tickets.”

Read: Walt Disney World offers new Lightning Lane Premier Pass

The company also noted that Ticketmaster's passwords were not exposed in the data breach earlier this year.

McCoy only made it to the game because he spent even more money buying new tickets. The new tickets were more expensive and further away from the action.

It was only after contacting Action 9 that he finally got at least his money back from Ticketmaster.

“I just think it just shows the huge disconnect between the big companies and how they think about us, the people on the outside, they don't really care,” he said.

Ticketmaster advised fans that the best way to protect themselves is to use a strong password for all accounts – particularly their personal email accounts – and said the company is constantly investing in new security improvements.

Click here to download our free news, weather and smart TV apps. And click here to stream Channel 9 Eyewitness News live.