"Official ticket site," in a pig's eye

The Federal Trade Commission and the State of Connecticut have fined three online ticket resellers $1.4 million for deceptive advertising. One of the companies, SecureBoxOffice, is run out of San Diego by James Moran.

SecureBoxOffice and Ryadd, Inc., sell event tickets through Connecticut-based TicketNetwork. However, the FTC and Connecticut charged that because of deceptive advertising, consumers thought they were buying tickets from an original venue at face value; actually, the websites were ticket-reseller sites peddling event tickets often priced above the venue's original price.

For example, a consumer might go to a search engine and enter "Radio City Music Hall." The consumer would come up with a site claiming to be the "official ticket site" for Radio City Music Hall tickets, but it was not an "official" site — it would be the site of one of the resellers.