Orlando man accused of $260K theme park ticket scheme

ORLANDO, Fla. — An Orlando man was arrested in a massive credit card fraud case involving theme park tickets.

Federal investigators say he used stolen credit card information to buy more than a quarter million dollars' worth of universal hotel and ticket packages.

Records show the alleged fraud started in June and it didn’t take long for the money to be spent.

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Investigators believe the suspect used stolen credit card information from at least 84 compromised credit cards in less than a year to spend $260,000 on tickets at Universal.

Secret Service investigators believe 25-year-old Ishod Hazell went on a Universal Orlando spending spree.

But it wasn't necessarily to enjoy the parks himself.

Investigators said he bought around $260,000 worth of ticket and hotel packages and then resold at least some of the tickets on the website “Offer Up."

"Make sure you're purchasing from someone that you've done your research on and that you've found that you can trust,” said Holly Salmons with the Better Business Bureau.

Salmons has heard horror stories from people who have been burned buying fraudulent or bogus theme park tickets.

"You could be purchasing a worthless piece of paper," Salmons said.

Salmons pointed out you can verify legitimate resellers doing a search on the National Association of Ticket Brokers' website.

In this case, investigators said Hazell used different names, and used the app "Text Now" to spoof different phone numbers on each call to order tickets.

They believe he used at least 84 different credit card numbers starting in June.

He told investigators he got the account numbers from an associate. Then he would pick up the tickets he ordered from kiosks outside the Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure parks.

No one answered at his home Thursday, but WFTV looked up his record and found he pleaded no contest to charges of fraudulent use of personal ID information in 2015.

Once investigators identified him, one of the ways they connected him to all these orders was comparing his voice on his public social media accounts to the voice on all the phone orders.

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