SCAMSTERS INC.

Terance Shepherd, 49, a London online tout, was planning to "go out in style", a former colleague warned last year, after a British newspaper exposed another of his websites, onlineticketshop.com, for selling non-existent World Cup tickets for English matches for up to $6000 each.

Now believed to be hiding in Barbados, Shepherd had planned "one last massive sting" before slipping into retirement, a Sydney private investigator, Ken Gamble, whohas been tracking the fraudster's activities since 2003, told the Herald yesterday.

Mr Gamble has compiled a dossier that includes more than 150 online ticketing websites allegedly having been operated by Shepherd, including http://www.olympicticketsbeijing 2008.com. Most have been registered to a company, Xclusive Leisure and Hospitality, at Suite 700, 2415 East Camelback Road in Phoenix, Arizona.

The internet is littered with victims' blogs about scams from numerous online ticketing sites which can be traced back to Shepherd's Phoenix business address, while he continues to live in a $3.2 million three-storey home in the south London suburb of Blackheath.

The sites are shut as soon asbuyers realise they have beenduped, but not before the operators have reaped hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Speaking from Amsterdam yesterday, Mr Gamble said that despite investigations by world soccer's governing body, FIFA, Britain's Football Association and rugby union officials, Shepherd had continued to dodge authorities by ensuring his name was never listed on any of the companies he controlled.

"It's an extraordinarily well-organised syndicate of fake websites, which also deliberately oversells tickets for major events on legitimate websites," Mr Gamble said.

"The story's always the same - it's an 'unfortunate mistake' or someone has 'let them down'. They promise a refund, which never happens."

Shepherd came to the attention of the NRL in 2003 after his company, Sports Mondial, was found to have obtained illegally $22,000 worth of tickets for the grand final. The Supreme Court ruled that Sports Mondial was a black market ticket seller and ordered it to refund $36,450 to 81 clients who had bought hospitality packages that included dinner, champagne and tickets to the final.

Not revealed at the time was a further $400,000 loss incurred by a big Sydney events company. About 700 tickets for corporate clients for Rugby World Cup matches were bought from a Shepherd syndicate for a total cost of $1 million. The director of the events company confirmed this to the Herald yesterday, on condition that his company and clients were not named. Only $600,000 worth of tickets were delivered, and none for the grand final.

The director said that to honour his client's contract and protect his reputation he was forced to mortgage his home to buy an extra 180 tickets, at $3000 each.

Last year Mr Gamble tracked down Shepherd's then Sydney frontman at the Rugby World Cup in Paris, where he was served a summons in relation to the 2003 scam.

Neither he nor Shepherd has returned to Australia since.

Source: The Age