"Detective Mike McCaffrey laughs when I ask if they busted the door down. Maybe I've seen too many movies. Normally, he says, they would. But in this instance, it's not the ticket scam perpetrator's residence. It's his mother's. So, in this high-rise apartment building on 96th Street in Manhattan, he simply knocks. The mother answers, kindly, oblivious to why the NYPD is at her door on this Tuesday morning."
"Inside, tucked in a small living room nook, is the man they've come for-the son, 28-year-old Nikhil Mahtani-surrounded by cellphones and laptops, tangled in charging cables. Months earlier, the NFL had tipped off law enforcement about Craigslist ads selling tickets that buyers never received. McCaffrey, who works with the NYPD's Financial Crimes Task Force, traced the ads back to Mahtani through IP addresses, phone numbers, email accounts-a digital trail leading straight to his mother's apartment."
Detective Mike McCaffrey and the NYPD traced Craigslist ticket-sale ads to 28-year-old Nikhil Mahtani at his mother's Manhattan apartment using IP addresses, phone numbers, and email accounts. From January 2019 to December 2022 Mahtani ran over 1,000 ads selling nonexistent tickets to NFL games, NBA championships, and concerts, defrauding more than 100 buyers across the United States. Seized devices contained screenshots of past ads, bank records showing $120,000 of ticket-buyer funds moved through Venmo and Zelle, and direct messages with victims, including a selfie and a photo of his driver's license sent as proof.
Read at Fast Company
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