Court heard Tuesday from the victims of Denise Tisor and David Blake, the Burlington, Ont., couple who orchestrated a $265,000-ticket scam that preyed on Taylor Swift fans looking to attend the pop megastar’s 2024 concerts in Toronto.
Several individuals, each of whom said they lost $1,000 or more in the complex scam, delivered impact statements at a Milton courthouse before Justice Peter Maund.
Those who spoke detailed how they had purchased what they thought were legitimate tickets from Tisor to the sold-out dates for The Eras Tour before they discovered that the tickets did not exist.
Of the 107 victims, the ones who asked for their money back were told by Tisor that the funds had been stolen by a third party. Court documents showed that there was no third party involved and both Tisor and Blake were knowingly defrauding their victims.
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Several victims said they knew Tisor personally or trusted her as a legitimate broker for the highly sought-after tickets. Some said they had purchased the tickets for their children as Christmas or birthday gifts, only to discover they had been duped on the day of the concert outside the venue.
Tisor and Blake pleaded guilty in July to one count of defrauding the public and one count of possession of property obtained by crime, respectively.
Court previously heard that Tisor and Blake used the funds to place “multiple” bets on various online gambling platforms between 2023 and 2024. They also made roughly 350 cash withdrawals totalling $297,000 from ATMs during the same period of time.
Tisor, who went by the name “Blackhawk Denise” online, previously apologized for the scam and said she was facing a serious gambling addiction at the time.
The accused were scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday. Sentencing has since been delayed.
Here is some of what court heard from the victims:
‘The kind of crying that tears a parent’s heart out’
Alaina Attard said she and her daughter’s grandparents pooled $1,500 to buy tickets for her then-15-year-old daughter.
In the months and weeks leading up to the concert, Attard said she and her daughter began making bracelets, shopping for special outfits to wear, and counting themselves as the “lucky ones” who would be able to attend what she described as a “once-in-a-lifetime” concert experience.
“The day you (Tisor) called to say the tickets were gone, I left work early. I felt physically ill. How was I ever going to be able to explain to my daughter that we were no longer going? Two days before the concert, so close, but we were never really close at all. You made sure of that,” she said.
When Attard informed her daughter they wouldn’t be going to the concert, she said she sobbed.
“The kind of crying that tears a parent’s heart out. She missed the next day of school too. She was heartbroken, but she was also embarrassed. You see, she had spent months telling everyone that she had secured coveted tickets to the Taylor Swift concert.”
‘Very devastating and stressful’
Leticia Chavez said she purchased tickets from Tisor for her then-12-year-old daughter as a Christmas gift, after she was referred to the accused by a friend who had previously bought tickets from her.
Chavez told the court that she purchased the tickets a year in advance and was informed by Tisor that the passes would be released 24 hours before the concert began.
In discovering that the tickets were fake, Chavez described the experience as “very devastating and stressful,” especially for her daughter.
“They were kids. If it had happened to me, I can handle it. But just seeing the devastation with my daughter, that’s the most upsetting part of this,” she said.
‘All I wanted for her was a little relief from her illness’
Kristina Picton said she told Tisor that her daughter had been sick for six years leading up to the concerts and hoped that buying her tickets to see Taylor Swift would offer her a brief reprieve from surgeries, biopsies and hard times.
Picton told the court that she paid Tisor $1,700 for the tickets and that they kept in touch leading up to the November dates.
She said she was “stressed out” by not having the tickets in hand as the concert approached, but was reassured by Tisor that they would be released on the day of the concert on Nov. 14 at the latest.
On that day, while in transit to the Rogers Centre, Picton said Tisor told her the person she had purchased the tickets from was not answering emails.
“We got off at the GO and we sat in a station and cried and cried and cried. My daughter and I were inconsolable, distraught, and bewildered. We were at a loss and utterly disheartened. We sat there at the GO station watching all these Swifties heading to a concert that we would never be going to. It was surreal.
“All I wanted for her was a little relief from her illness and joy in the performance that her favourite singer could provide. I couldn’t believe I was taken for a ride, and that people would be capable of such malicious behaviour.”
‘Ashamed, even though I knew I had done nothing wrong’
Shelby Harding said she paid Tisor $2,130 for six tickets for herself, family members, and friends, including two who travelled across the continent to see the concert.
“The weeks before the show were some of the happiest we had shared. We met to plan our outfits, finally deciding on custom denim jackets, which we designed and made together over hours of work on several weekends. We built an entire weekend itinerary of Taylor-themed plans around the concert,” she said.
The moment she learned the tickets were fraudulent, Harding said she was in shock and felt unsure of how to inform her friends and family and “break each of their hearts like mine had just been.”
“I was also ashamed, even though I knew I had done nothing wrong.”
In the fallout of the scam, Harding said her once-“giddy” group chat with her friends and family has become a “graveyard of experience that could have been.”
“My mom, my sister, and my friends have all told me that they do not blame me, and although I believe them, this has not made it easier or made me feel any less guilty. These people trusted me, and I brought them together around a promise that I ultimately could not keep.”
With files from Sean Leathong
