FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) — A Halloween hack is coming to light as the organizers behind Fresno’s Hauntmare Expo open Skream Valley in Sanger.
“It’s frustrating when it’s hard to pay the bills,” organizer Luther Riddle said.
He and organizer Dino Garcia say the July expo drew thousands to the Fresno Fairgrounds, featuring vendors, celebrities, haunted houses and zombie laser tag.
The revenue from the tickets never showed up.
“Somebody had logged into our ticket provider, they changed the gateway of where the money was going and it was just siphoning off into somebody else’s bank account,” Riddle said.
The change to the deposit account occurred one week before the event, right when the organizers said the bulk of their tickets were sold.
“That’s $60k right there,” Garcia said. “Between that point to our opening, that was $60,000 of tickets.”
In the midst of final preparations, with Riddle and Garcia getting ready for 5,000 attendees, they say they did not discover the change in banking details until after the expo.
“When we’re looking at the bank, we’re just, you know, we’re in the hold, and it didn’t make sense,” Riddle. “Nothing is matching up at all.”
Officials say the hack is an important reminder to monitor online accounts.
“Limit the amount of information that you’re putting out into the internet and different resources,” Corporal Sean O’Brien at the Clovis Police Department said.
Two-factor authentication can be a deterrent, although it does not always work.
“It all just depends on the type of information that you’re trying to access,” Corporal O’Brien said. “That’s why we’re just trying to limit as much as we can the information that we’re actually putting out.”
Hauntmare’s organizers tell Action News that they filed reports with the Sheriff’s Office and the FBI, but do not think they will get the money back.
