Sports Radio Host Arrested For Selling Fake Adele & Bieber Tickets To Pay Casino Debt
Sept. 6 2017, Updated 4:46 p.m. ET
Sports radio host Craig Carton has been arrested and accused of fraud after an alleged ticket-selling scam to pay off his massive gambling debts, RadarOnline.com has learned.
The Boomer & Carton co-host was taken into custody at four in the morning this Wednesday in NYC.
Boomer Esiason addressed incident on air Wednesday morning, saying, "I'm taken aback and surprised by it just like I'm sure everybody else is. I have no other information, there's nothing else I can say. I thought he called in sick this morning, but unfortunately my partner was arrested."
According to a Securities and Exchange Commission complaint, the WFAN personality accumulated a series of gambling-related debts starting 2016.
He, along with Joseph Meli, then began reselling concert tickets for a large profit, according to the documents.
"Carton provided fabricated and forged documents to an investor purporting to reflect agreements for the purchase of large blocks of tickets by entities controlled by Meli or Carton. In certain cases, Meli provided these fake agreements to Carton, for the express purpose of having Carton pass them along to an investor," reads the complaint.
"Carton provided to another investor documents referencing a purported agreement by an entity controlled by Meli to purchase millions of dollars' worth of Adele concert tickets at face value, directly from Adele's management company."
According to the complaint, the tickets sold by Carton and his business partner were fake, and the signatures for the concert promoters and venues "were forged." This caused the companies to lose "millions of dollars."
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The duo allegedly sold tickets to concerts by artists such as: Katy Perry, Justin Bieber, Barbra Streisand, Metallica and Roger Waters. They were accused of stealing up to $3.6M together. Carton alone is alleged to have stolen $2M from a single investor.
"Carton and Meli used new investor funds to repay earlier investors and other preexisting debts, including Carton's debt to casinos, rather than to purchase tickets for resale as promised," read the documents.
The radio personality is due in Federal Court this Wednesday evening.
CBS Radio, which owns WFAN, shared in a statement following Carton's arrest, "We are aware of the situation and are cooperating with authorities."
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