An Ontario couple who defrauded dozens of people in a $265,000-Taylor Swift ticket scam will be sentenced on Oct. 6.
Denise Tisor and her common-law partner David Blake pleaded guilty last month. Tisor pleaded guilty to one count of defrauding the public while Blake pleaded guilty to one count of possession of property obtained by crime in connection with the fraud.
An agreed statement of facts showed that 107 people purchased tickets from Tisor to one of Swift’s six sold-out November 2024 concerts in Toronto.
Some of those victims purchased passes from Tisor as far in advance as August 2023 and told CTV News Toronto they planned to give the highly sought after tickets to their children for Christmas that year.
Police said at the time that victims were told by Tisor that the tickets wouldn’t be available until a few days before the concert. When those victims went to access their tickets on the concert dates, they were unavailable.
Victims who asked for their money back were told by Tisor that the funds had been stolen by a third party. The court documents show that there was no third party involved and both Tisor and Blake knew they were defrauding their victims.
Beyond that, 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, apologized for the scam and said she was facing a serious gambling addiction at the time.
With files from CTV News Toronto’s Sean Leathong
