The Federal Bureau of Investigation has joined the Summit County Sheriff’s Office in investigating a security breach that resulted from a third-party vendor selling tickets to two events at the recent Summit County Fair.
Summit County officials are still encouraging people who bought tickets for the Summit County Fair’s demolition derby and rodeo to contact their bank immediately to check for any unauthorized transactions due to the security breach.
Seven to eight people have contacted the Sheriff’s office to report that their banking accounts suffered unauthorized transactions, said Sgt. Ron Bridge, public information officer for the Sheriff’s Office. “That doesn’t mean that there aren’t hundreds of victims out there,” Bridge said.
Bridge said he and two other detectives in the Sheriff’s Office had sldo been victimized by the breach.
According to Julie Booth, Summit County public and community affairs coordinator, the County learned Aug. 27 that EZTicketLive, a third-party online vendor contracted for the ticketing, suffered a credit and debit card breach affecting people who bought tickets for the two Fair events.
About 950 online transactions were made in buying tickets for the rodeo and demolition derby at the Fair, Booth said.
Other counties utilizing this vendor are experiencing a similar breach, Booth said, including Juab County.
A July 30, 2014 editorial in the Aberdeen News, a newspaper in South Dakota, reported that the same vendor was used for its own recent Brown County Fair, and that numerous people “expressed concerns that their credit cards have been compromised after buying their fair tickets online. To be sure, some residents have said that unauthorized charges are showing up on their statements, and they believe the common denominator was buying grandstand tickets through the vendor EZTicketLive.”
Victims in Summit County, according to sheriff’s reports, included one man who said there had been five charges to his credit card from England, Canada and Missouri, ranging from a gas purchase of $8.30 to a floral purchase of $66.98.
Sometime during the week of Aug. 4, another victim purchased seven tickets to the rodeo. Since that time and before contacting her bank, she has had five PayPal charges on her account ranging from about $95 to $184 and totaling over $700.
On Aug. 29, another victim reported that her credit card number was obtained through the credit card vendor for the Summit County Fair, and $1,494 in airline charges were posted to her account.
Summit County has terminated services with EZTicketLive, which had been the third-party vendor for online tickets the previous two years, with no problems reported, Summit County Fair Administrator Travis English said.
“We were just heartbroken,” said English, who added that he and others are investigating other options for selling tickets next year.
Other ticketed events at the fair have not been affected, including the 5K and Little Buckaroo Rodeo, as well as fair vendors, Booth said.
Summit County’s online payment system was “in no way linked” with the security breach, Booth added. “Outsourcing to a third-party vendor was for the Summit County Fair only and should not discourage residents from using county online services now and in the future.”