Maroon 5 ticket holders left out in the cold after scam

It wasn't a concert Laura Fowler was going to miss, but despite paying $390 for a pair of tickets, she nearly did.

Fowler's tickets for the Maroon 5 concert Sunday night turned out to be good-looking fakes and she only managed to see the show after shelling out another $400. 

She wasn't alone. Hundreds of fake ticket holders, many of whom didn't have the extra cash, were turned away at the doors.

Maroon 5 tickets sold out shortly after they went on sale last year. But Fowler said she wasn't going to miss seeing her favourite band so she turned to Craigslist.

Fowler corresponded via text message with the seller, and arranged a meeting with a young girl who she thought she could trust.

"I met up with a young lady who seemed totally normal," she said. "I never thought she would have been scamming me, I was very naive there I suppose."

Fowler wasn't the only one feeling the misery. While there are no official numbers, Rogers Arena staff say they turned away a few hundred people.

"To see there were 50 other people there [when she was being turned away], I didn't feel so stupid, because I wasn't the only one," Fowler said.

Counterfeit tickets are a major problem at Rogers Arena, and counterfeiting has reached a level of sophistication that makes it very difficult to tell the real tickets from the fakes, said Vancouver Police Sgt. Randy Fincham.

Fincham recommends people buying online check ID and take a picture of the seller.