A group of Liverpool football fans claim to have been conned out of £19,000 after buying 19 fake Champions league final tickets for £1,000 each.
Thousands of Liverpool fans are expected to travel to Paris in the coming days as their team takes on Spanish giants Real Madrid in Europe's elite football competition.
Ray Mcdonald, from Cheshire, and his friends bought tickets for the match online and received them on Tuesday.
But after examining the PDF-style tickets, the group realised that they had been sold fakes.
Liverpool are set to take on Real Madrid in the Champions League final on Saturday
Adam Davy
Liverpool in training ahead of the final
Peter Byrne
Speaking about the incident, Mr Mcdonald said: “We bought 19 tickets at a grand each so we've spent £19,000 between us.
“It looked legit at first, I didn't think anything of it. About 11pm last night I was about to go to sleep and my phone was going mad.
“I tried to phone (the seller) and it said the number was not in service anymore and at that point I was like 'I've been done here.
“Everyone is gutted to be honest. It's been a rollercoaster of emotions,” he told the Liverpool Echo.
Mr Mcdonald says his friends had previously brought a total of 40 tickets from the same tout, with all of them being legitimate.
He attempted to claim the money back through his bank, but because he had received a “ticket”, they told him he was unable too.
While another fan also fell foul of a ticket tout, paying £2,500 for two tickets which turned out to be fake.
He said: “I found out last night and it does make you feel quite sick to be honest. I've been very careful about doing things like this in general.
“I feel like I'm pretty street wise but the fact that he had all these reviews from all these people who I vaguely know or I've met before, nothing made me think 'OK he could be a scammer'.
“I got sent them and thought they were legitimate and then literally two hours later their Twitter page got cancelled and their phone number was blocked. They've either fabricated a PDF which looks like it's plausible or they've actually got one ticket that was real and tried to copy and paste different things on it.”
Both Liverpool and Merseyside Police have issued warnings to supporters to be vigilant when purchasing tickets.