3 Men Charged With Austin City Limits Festival Fraud

AUSTIN, TX — Organized crime has hit the Austin City Limits Festival. Police on Monday said three suspects have been arrested in a scheme that sold re-used bracelets for the music concert series more than 100 times in a racket that resulted in a loss of more than $10,000 for the event's organizers.

In an afternoon press conference, officer Destiny Silva said police conducted a sting operation after spotting the suspects' ad on Craiglist alerting to the scheme.

The scam unraveled for the arrested trio when an undercover officer posing as a customer met them at an apartment complex where the policeman was told he'd be charged just over $100 for a wristband after giving them his cell phone or identification as collateral before entering the festival grounds. Then, the men would take the wristbands back for later reuse after the customer was inside the gates.

General admission into the ACL Festival is valued at $250. Police estimate the fraudulently obtained wristbands were scanned more than 100 times, representing nearly $11,000 in lost, legitimate admission fees.

Briefing regarding ACL wristband thefts. https://t.co/1cFbXSwE9D
— Austin Police Dept (@Austin_Police) October" class="redactor-linkify-object">https://twitter.com/Austin_Pol... 7, 2019

After such an exchange of wristband and collateral, the three men were arrested on Saturday. They were identified as Nathan Beck, 30, Cameron Beck, 24, and Michael Martin, 33, each now facing charges of theft of service and engaging in organized criminal activity. Given the monetary extent of the fraud, the former charge is a state felony, police said.

For the time being, Silva said, police are focused on levying charges against the ringleaders rather than concertgoers who knowingly participated in the scheme.

But that could change, she suggested: "At this point, we are only charging the three individuals who collaborated and worked together to commit theft," Silva said. "Again, we can't rule anything out, but no one else is being charged at this time for participating in this."

Earlier in the press conference, she offered a tip to concertgoers: "Do not purchase wristbands from anybody you don't know or any unidentified sources."