Ticket scam: Shabbaz Hamayun avoided a jail term
A business student found a scheme to produce cash out of thin air by selling non-existent tickets for rugby's World Cup Final over the internet.
He advertised on website Gumtree and sold fake tickets for the final at £400 each to desperate rugby fans who wanted to go to the showpiece match.
Shabbaz Hamayun then sent empty envelopes to the supporters and then tried to blame Royal Mail staff for stealing the tickets which never existed.
At Perth Sheriff Court on Wednesday, the Paisley University student narrowly avoided a jail term - and was ordered to carry out the maximum 240 hours community service.
He was allowed to walk free from court after Sheriff Michael Fletcher heard he had paid back almost all of the £2400 he duped from English rugby supporters.
Two England supporters travelled to France for the final and expected to collect the gold-dust tickets for the match between England and South Africa.
The fraudster conned desperate England supporters into paying £400 per ticket for the final in St Denis, France. Hamayun pretended to have tickets for the match but claimed on Gumtree that he was forced to sell them on due to family difficulties.
He conned unsuspecting fans Jonathan Elworthy and Mark Holbeche into depositing cash in a bank account and they only realised it was a scam when the tickets never arrived.
The spectators only found out hours before the final on October 20 2007 that they would miss out on the glamour match. Hamayun, 27, admitted two charges of fraud relating to the sale of non-existent sport event tickets. He admitted that between October 16 and 19 2007 he pretended to have three tickets which he sold to Mr Elworthy for £1200.
He also admitted selling the same non-tickets to Mark Holbeche, from Stratford-Upon-Avon, for a further £1200. Hamayun, from Crow Road, Glasgow, admitted getting both of his victims to pay the full sum into an account at the Royal Bank of Scotland in Perth.
The money was handed over by electronic transfer and Hamayun - who used the name Mark to sell the tickets - never met his victims.
They described how they had discovered an advert on the Gumtree website purporting to be from a genuine rugby fan. Hamayun even said he did not want to be bothered by "time-wasters" and was initially asking for £500 pounds each for the tickets.
He gave contact details and when Mr Holbeche and Mr Elworthy contacted him he agreed to drop the price to £1200 each for three tickets.
Mr Elworthy, 21, from Farnborough, said: "I had been to the semi-final after buying tickets on the same Gumtree website without any hassle at all. That site was a huge marketplace before the final and everyone was on there trying to buy last-minute final tickets.
"However daft it may sound I simply sent the money to his bank account details. He seemed very plausible when I spoke to him. I thought I had purchased tickets, but all he sent me back was an empty envelope. I knew as soon as it arrived that the game was up."
Hamayun was ordered to pay the final £400 compensation which remains outstanding to his two victims.
