A Chef Found a Scammer Peddling a Fake Dinner on Eventbrite

This photo is from a real dinner that actually happened at Uma Casa. Photo from their FB page.

The other day I was reached out to by Telmo Faria, the Chef/Owner of Uma Casa, a Portuguese restaurant in San Francisco’s Noe Valley.

“Just found out someone is running a scam posing as restaurants/events on Eventbrite,” he told me via Instagram.

Apparently the scammer took information and images from a $150 per person wine dinner that Uma Casa did last October, and set up an “event” as if it’s happening on February 8th, 2023. They were selling tickets ranging from $22 to $62.

The flyer for the original Wine Producer Dinner at Uma Casa. Note that the date was 10/15

The fake dinner as it was listed on Eventbrite

And what’s wild is that Faria only found out because someone reached out to him to ask about the menu because of their dietary restrictions. Otherwise Faria would’ve had no way to know some creep was pretending to be Uma Casa and faking a dinner, just to scam money out of people.

You can tell Faria is completely surprised that there is a dinner on Eventbrite he’s supposed to be hosting.

As you can see from the conversation above, Faria reaches out to Eventbrite to let them know it’s a scam, and so they can take it down and refund people. And he can’t get ahold of anyone!

That’s so like tech companies. They create a service where they make a shit load of money but refuse to staff people to handle problems when they invariably arise. I mean, they did layoff half their staff in 2020, and I’m not sure how many people they hired back. But this seems like a very important thing you’d want to keep staff on for. Especially since there is a lot of competition in the ticketing space.

The morning after Faria messaged me, he looked online again and the event was no longer there. But he doesn’t know if it’s because Eventbrite got the messages and took it down, or because the scammer got cold feet. He still hasn’t heard from Eventbrite.

“I imagine this isn’t an isolated event,” Faria later tells me over email. “If I hadn’t found out, we might’ve had people showing up expecting a 5 course wine dinner.”

Do you know anyone else this has happened to? Let us know in the comments.