est. 2007

Barbados Underground

Bringing News and Opinions to the People

Beijing Olympics Online Ticket Scam leaves A Trail To Barbados

Even as the the Beijing Olympics is set to be unveiled to the world today with over one billion people across the world expected to tune in, little Barbados according to reports is being represented by a small team of six athletes. We take this opportunity to wish the team all the luck in the…

, , , , ,
This is the British conman accused of masterminding an Olympic tickets scam that has fleeced fans around the world - Source The Mirror
On the right is the 49 year old British conman Terrance Shepherd accused of masterminding an Olympic tickets scam that has fleeced fans around the world/Image source the Mirror
Barbados Olympic Team as they participate in the Opening Ceromony in China
Barbados Olympic Team as they participated in the Opening Ceremony in China/Source BU family member

Even as the the Beijing Olympics is set to be unveiled to the world today with over one billion people across the world expected to tune in, little Barbados according to reports is being represented by a small team of six athletes. We take this opportunity to wish the team all the luck in the world because they will need it. In a previous blog we wrote about how Barbados needs to Stop Mekkin Sport At Sports. How on God’s earth will our part time athletes, who are not able to incorporate the required banned substances as part of their training regimen be able to compete with the top athletes in the world. The truth is we have our fingers and toes crossed for Jade Baily who seems to have what it takes to go all the way but…

To the point of this blog. One of the biggest Olympic online ticket scams has been uncovered. Terrance Shepherd a 49 year old Briton has been able to set-up an elaborate online network which has resulted in him pocketing millions of dollars at the expense of unsuspecting dupes. The scam is being reported to have affected people in Australia, New Zealand, United States, Canada, Hong Kong …

Here is the punch line to this story. Can anyone guess what the heir to the £5 billion Tetra Pac fortune and scam artist Terrance Shepherd have in common? Yes you guessed it, Mr. Shepherd has been reported to have fled to Barbados! Barbados is a small place, if this vagabond is in Barbados please call the nearest police station.

Thanks to regular BU family member

41 responses to “Beijing Olympics Online Ticket Scam leaves A Trail To Barbados”

  1. Ian Bourne Avatar
    Ian Bourne

    Bajan Global Report broke the story 1st, makes me wonder what became of Walter Matthiesen? Still In Germany, I think…

  2. David Avatar
    David

    What does Walter Mattiesen have to do with this story Ian?

  3. Partial Avatar
    Partial

    Anybody offering a reward for this fella? Let me know so I can put on my PI cap and start looking for him. I could use some swift cash!

    @ David

    I think that Mattiesen person was the one who owed the NIS hundreds of thousands of $ and split the country. I’m sure Ian will have fuller details.

  4. David Avatar
    David

    Partial we know who he is but we want to know the connection Ian made to this story.

  5. Me Avatar
    Me

    Is Barbados represented by six or eight athletes? What is correct number?

    For sure BOA officials Steve Stoute his son Erskine Simmons and Bruggadung Johnson and the rest of the BOA permanent crew to the Olympics will be there free of cost contributing zero but having a roaring good time.

    The two frequent flyers missing are Booza King and Mike Mansell. I hear our beauty queen sports minister will be there with an entourage.

    Olympics is a big expensive sight seeing tour for local officials. Of course all expenses are borne by the poor taxpayers. We need to stop mekkin sport at sports.

  6. Wishing In Vain Avatar
    Wishing In Vain

    Of course Booza King has raped the NSC enough he has now been set aside to pasture, please no more free money for him.

    The Minister is there on OFFICIAL BUSINESS no issue with that or with her.

  7. Adrian Hinds Avatar
    Adrian Hinds

    It is impossible for the man in that picture to be 49 years old. Life in Hingland could be that hard? 🙂

  8. DGround Avatar
    DGround

    can someone please tell me the olympics “squad” I keep seeing and hearing different numbers…me confuse.

  9. David Avatar
    David

    @DGround/me

    Our regrets, we did a search of the Internet and the number is eight.

  10. Mark Belgrave Avatar
    Mark Belgrave

    The opening ceremony was the bomb!

  11. Waiting In Vain Avatar
    Waiting In Vain

    London will have an almost impossible act to follow, China exceeded all expectations, a massive , massive result.

    I wonder how President Bush enjoyed the event because it certainly exceeded Atlanta or La it was class act.

  12. Sargeant Avatar
    Sargeant

    wonder how President Bush enjoyed the event because it certainly exceeded Atlanta or La it was class act.
    Waiting in Vain

    You always have to find something negative to say don’t you? To compare Olympic opening ceremonies of twelve and twenty four ago in the USA to the opening ceremony in China is really stupid. Most of us are familiar with the USA and any cultural acts there would be of no surprise to us whereas by contrast for many of us our exposure to China is eating “Chinese food”. You should appreciate each country on its merits and not compare apples to oranges.

    Here is something positive about the USA, their flag bearer Lopez Lomong was a refugee and one of the “Lost Boys of Sudan” who only became a US citizen last year. If you can point out another country in the world where this would be possible I’ll retract the following statement.

    Waiting In Vain for a brain.

  13. Green Monkey Avatar
    Green Monkey

    The Olympics: Unveiling Police State 2.0
    by Naomi Klein

    So far, the Olympics have been an open invitation to China-bash, a bottomless excuse for Western journalists to go after the Commies on everything from internet censorship to Darfur. Through all the nasty news stories, however, the Chinese government has seemed amazingly unperturbed. That’s because it is betting on this: when the opening ceremonies begin friday, you will instantly forget all that unpleasantness as your brain is zapped by the cultural/athletic/political extravaganza that is the Beijing Olympics.

    Like it or not, you are about to be awed by China’s sheer awesomeness.

    The games have been billed as China’s “coming out party” to the world. They are far more significant than that. These Olympics are the coming out party for a disturbingly efficient way of organizing society, one that China has perfected over the past three decades, and is finally ready to show off. It is a potent hybrid of the most powerful political tools of authoritarianism communism — central planning, merciless repression, constant surveillance — harnessed to advance the goals of global capitalism. Some call it “authoritarian capitalism,” others “market Stalinism,” personally I prefer “McCommunism.”

    The Beijing Olympics are themselves the perfect expression of this hybrid system. Through extraordinary feats of authoritarian governing, the Chinese state has built stunning new stadiums, highways and railways — all in record time. It has razed whole neighborhoods, lined the streets with trees and flowers and, thanks to an “anti-spitting” campaign, cleaned the sidewalks of saliva. The Communist Party of China even tried to turn the muddy skies blue by ordering heavy industry to cease production for a month — a sort of government-mandated general strike.

    As for those Chinese citizens who might go off-message during the games — Tibetan activists, human right campaigners, malcontent bloggers — hundreds have been thrown in jail in recent months. Anyone still harboring protest plans will no doubt be caught on one of Beijing’s 300,000 surveillance cameras and promptly nabbed by a security officer; there are reportedly 100,000 of them on Olympics duty.

    The goal of all this central planning and spying is not to celebrate the glories of Communism, regardless of what China’s governing party calls itself. It is to create the ultimate consumer cocoon for Visa cards, Adidas sneakers, China Mobile cell phones, McDonald’s happy meals, Tsingtao beer, and UPS delivery — to name just a few of the official Olympic sponsors. But the hottest new market of all is the surveillance itself. Unlike the police states of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, China has built a Police State 2.0, an entirely for-profit affair that is the latest frontier for the global Disaster Capitalism Complex.

    Chinese corporations financed by U.S. hedge funds, as well as some of American’s most powerful corporations — Cisco, General Electric, Honeywell, Google — have been working hand in glove with the Chinese government to make this moment possible: networking the closed circuit cameras that peer from every other lamp pole, building the “Great Firewall” that allows for remote internet monitoring, and designing those self-censoring search engines.

    http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/08/07/10860/

  14. David Avatar
    David

    After watching the opening ceremony we realized why the Chinese economy is the world’s third largest economy, its PEOPLE. Did anyone really appreciate the creativity and efficiency of those performers, forget the performance think about the concept.

    It made us recall Bush tea’s mantra for Barbados to survive on the world stage.

  15. Adrian Hinds Avatar
    Adrian Hinds

    Sargeant // August 9, 2008 at 9:22 am

    Here is something positive about the USA, their
    flag bearer Lopez Lomong was a refugee and one of the “Lost Boys of Sudan” who only became a US citizen last year. If you can point out another country in the world where this would be possible I’ll retract the following statement.

    =================================

    Ditto Sargeant. Lopez Lamong personifies my enduring observation and experience of life in the US. People are given a chance base on what they can do, rather than, on who they know, or what they look like.

  16. Adrian Hinds Avatar
    Adrian Hinds

    Green Monkey, thanks for that article. It has put in perspective some thoughts I’ve had, on why China was awarded the 2008 Olympics, and what it is hoped will be achieved by the Socialists and the greedy unbridled Capitalists in the West.

    The 3 gorge dam which cause massive social dislocation, and has had significant, negative environmental impact, to realize, has become a major economic engine for china. The Chinese government declared that such a project was only possible in socialist China. Socialism was born to fight the owners of labour and capital, for better conditions for workers. China continues to be the slave labour society of the world, and it’s Leadership sensing a need to bring prosperity to it’s restless people have joined hands with the Capitalist of the West, who continues to operate on an economic model of continued growth, to bring measured progress to China in exchange for market access and profits. It could very well lead to Socialism of the red flavour coming to the west, sometime in the future when growth in Asia has peaked. Now where is Obama in all of this? 🙂 some of us in America can see beyond his half-blackness and clearly see his Socialist credentials. 🙂

  17. David Avatar
    David

    According to the Nation Newspaper the fraudster left Barbados.

    Ticket trickster not in Barbados
    Published on: 8/11/08.

    THE ENGLISHMAN believed to be the mastermind behind a multi-million Beijing Olympics ticketing scam, reportedly arrived in Barbados in March, but left a month later for Miami.

    A senior police source told the DAILY NATION on Saturday the records also showed that a man bearing the same identity of the fraudster, indicated he had visited the island on previous occasions.

    A number of websites including the Guardian on-line newspaper in England reported the man might have been hiding in Barbados, after several people turned up in China to attend the Beijing Games, but discovered they were holding fraudulent tickets.

    The scam site http://www.beijingtickets.com conned several Olympic fans worldwide including one man who had bought two tickets for over $7 000 to attend Friday’s opening ceremony.

    The International Olympic Committee has reportedly taken legal action against the website which disappeared last Friday and left behind a message “This domain is currently parked”. (TS)

  18. Partial Avatar
    Partial

    How come the police have ‘records’ to show when this man came and went and they/immigration don’t have any to show about the Guyanese who never left Bdos. Or do they?
    BU – sorry for posting this here.

  19. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Partial

    As usual you are thinking clearly.

    Owen,Mia and the immigration department, as well as Norman Faria know the real numbers,but they were only playing games with the bajans.

    I know this situation cannot continue,these illegal guyanese and others must leave Barbados NOW!

    And the gall of mia mottley yesterday to try to feed us crap by telling us – the BLP had put in place a ‘managed migration policy’.

    The guyanese living in Guyana have come on this very site and told us how Mia went down to B.G. – or Guyana and give them a lot of promises and assurances from her government with regards to them coming here to barbados.

    I think the Thompson administration taking too blasted long on this matter – to be truthful.

    Action now David Thompson.

  20. Partial Avatar
    Partial

    If the police had a tip off and were keeping their eyes on this scammer, I would understand why they were aware of his comings and goings.

    However, if he arrived in Bdos as a regular tourist and they still knew of his movements, it means that systems ARE in place to know who left when.

    I know we can’t get into confidential info re the police, but I think this needs some clarification.

    Is there or is there not such a system in place.

  21. David Avatar
    David

    @Partial

    All residents and non-residents have to complete an immigration card when entering and leaving Barbados, this is FACT. It is our understanding that the cards are used to update a database, this is done we believe by the Barbados Statistical Service (BSS) in collaboration with the Immigration Department.

    Even if we provide for a lag of 1-2 months the database should be suffuciently populated that accurate reports can be generated to identify non-residents who were permitted to leave by x time but failed to do so. It is not rocket science.

    Can a BU family member call the BSS and report back on their findings?

  22. Direct TV Sucks Avatar
    Direct TV Sucks

    why is it that Direct TV is showing a black screen for NBC for Olympic coverage? Anyone in the know?

  23. David Avatar
    David

    We have to admit that Bolt looks just too easy.

  24. Micro Mock Engineer Avatar
    Micro Mock Engineer

    true David… looks like the rest have to fight up for silver and bronze. I’m sticking with my earlier 1, 2, 3 call until I get to see the replays of second round heats from this morning… Thompson and Martina making me rethink my 2nd & 3rd place picks… but I still don’t see Tyson Gay placing.

  25. David Avatar
    David

    You should not count-out Gay. He is coming off an injury and like a good thoroughbred may need a race or two to find his rhythm.

  26. Micro Mock Engineer Avatar
    Micro Mock Engineer

    I suppose you have a point David… but at this level with such hot competition on his tail (Thompson, Martina, Dix, Atkins) even a small chink in the armor will do you in. I think he will have a hard time even placing in his semifinal… dat is a easy bet for you David… what sort of odds you giving me on dat one 🙂

  27. Chinee Avatar
    Chinee

    Are my eyes fooling me or did our Andrew Hinds ease up before he hit the tape in the second round ?

  28. David Avatar
    David

    MME We will take that bet. Gay should make the final in our books.

  29. me Avatar
    me

    BOLT,Thompson, Asafa….Gay does not look race fit

  30. Micro-Mock Engineer Avatar
    Micro-Mock Engineer

    David?

  31. David Avatar
    David

    We concede Sire!
    We still have Bolt for #1 are we in agreement?

  32. Micro-Mock Engineer Avatar
    Micro-Mock Engineer

    Agreed…

    I am hard pressed to keep my picks prior to the start of the heats… Thompson and Martina look lethal… and Asafa is an obvious pick for 2 or 3… but I have looked at a few of Walter Dix’s past races, and the way he feeds off the other competitors is impressive… he is a big day horse.

    I am going to stay with my pre-heats prediction. Next prediction, everyone in the final will run sub-10.

  33. David Avatar
    David

    A fantastic race for BOLT. It reminded us of that time Ben Johnson won only this was so easy for BOLT. Whenever we think the time can’t be lowered some athlete comes along and proves us wrong. We are sorry for Asafa but he needs to improve mentally, he gets too wound up or so it seems. Good luck to Thompson who seems to be a nice sprinter in the making.

    Lets see if BOLT can turn it on in the 200 as well.

  34. me Avatar
    me

    asafa needs pyschological help
    this is not a good showing by hi at all. He can run sub 9.8 without dificulty …eh should have been 3rd

  35. Wishing In Vain Avatar
    Wishing In Vain

    My congrats to all the West Indians who made the finals and special congrats to Usain Bolt and Thompson for two tremendous runs.

    Then again should I say with a name like THOMPSON I would have expected a top drawer performance from him.

  36. Wishing In Vain Avatar
    Wishing In Vain

    Sensational Bolt wins gold in world record

    Jamaica’s Usain Bolt wins Olympic 100 meters title in world record 9.69 seconds

    Arch-rival Asafa Powell finishes a disappointing fifth in final in Beijing

    Trinidad’s Richard Thompson and Walter Dix (U.S) win silver and bronze

    American world champion Tyson Gay fails to make the final

    (CNN) — Usain Bolt smashed his own world record in winning the Olympic 100 meters title in Beijing with one of the most remarkable performances in the history of track and field.

    Bolt (right) crosses the line ahead of Thompson (center) and Dix to win 100m gold.

    1 of 2 The 21-year-old Jamaican clocked 9.69 seconds to win from Trinidad and Tobago’s Richard Thompson (9.89 seconds) and America’s Walter Dix (9.91 seconds).

    But it was the manner of his victory that was truly astonishing as he started his celebrations before crossing the line, showboating with his arms out wide before slapping his chest in triumph.

    He was still comfortably inside his own world mark of 9.72 seconds set in New York in May when he came to wordwide prominence as a gold medal contender.

    Bolt’s great Jamaican rival and former world record holder Asafa Powell finished a disappointing fifth while America’s world champion Tyson Gay failed to make the final as he finished fifth in the earlier semifinal round.

    Bolt, who will now be hot favorite to complete the 100-200 double, told BBC Sport that he expected to break his own record.

    Don’t Miss
    Special report: Beijing 2008
    “I felt the world record might go as it’s a new track and very quick,” he said.

    “I came here just to win and I did just that. I didn’t even know I’d broken the world record until I did my victory lap.

    “Now I’m just concentrating on my two races coming up. I came here prepared and I’m going to try and do it the (100 and 200m double).”

    The race had been one of the most eagerly anticipated in sprint history, as record six of the eight finalists dipped below the magic 10 seconds barrier in the 91,000-capacity National Stadium.

    Powell, who again flattered to deceive on the big stage, was generous in his verdict on compatriot Bolt’s performance.

    “Usain was spectacular,” Powell told Associated Press.

    “He was definitely untouchable tonight. He could have gone a lot faster if he had run straight through the line.”

    Earlier, walker Valeriy Borchin held off former champion Jefferson Perez of Ecuador to earn Russia’s first athletics gold of the Beijing Games.

    Borchin won the men’s 20 kilometres race walk in one hour, 19 minutes and 01 seconds for Russia’s first Olympic walking success.

    The 22-year-old, who served a one-year drugs ban in the 2005/06 season, came home ahead 1996 Olympic champion Perez by 14 seconds, with Australian Jared Tallent a further 27 seconds adrift in the bronze medal position.

  37. Micro Mock Engineer Avatar
    Micro Mock Engineer

    … great race. Decided to go and watch it with some Trinis. De party only jus done… actually it en done, but I retire hurt. It should be illegal to start drinking so early in the morning… 🙂
    David, You doan feel Bolt shoulda enter de 400 too… just fuh sport, and to upset that US fella Wariner.
    I could hardly wait for the 200 and 4×100.

  38. David Avatar
    David

    Good to hear you enjoying yuhself thats whats life is meant to be. BOLT is a slight fella he gotta watch it. 4×100 we are looking forward to because Asafa MUST medal, he has done alot for the 100m race in the last couple of years.

  39. The scout Avatar
    The scout

    If I live to be in an armchair and looking back at my life, I can sit back and remember some of the remarkable sport feats I witnessed. Even though I actually saw Lawrence Rowe’s 302 runs, the victory by Bolt today has by FAR erase anyother performance I’ve ever seen; AND HE’S FROM THE CARRIBBEAN.

  40. David Avatar
    David

    The Americans are crying foul in the Women 100m. The Jamaicans swept the final is it a case of sour grapes or …

  41. Micro Mock Engineer Avatar
    Micro Mock Engineer

    I expect that we will see a decline in US dominance in several sports now that there is increased drug testing and scrutiny of athletes… and Jamaica can expect to come under heavy scrutiny, especially since they have declined joining the Caribbean Regional Anti-doping Organisation (headed by Dr. Adrian Lorde) and have no properly functioning anti-doping program or body of their own.

The blogmaster invites you to join the discussion.

Trending

Discover more from Barbados Underground

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading