SANTA ANA, CALIF.
A federal grand jury indicted an Orange County man involved in a $6 million scam that bilked investors who were promised profits from the resale of tickets to Super Bowl and World Cup ticket, according to officials.
Seyed Reza Ali Fazeli, 49, a professional poker player who resides in Aliso Viejo, was named in a two-count indictment returned Wednesday by a federal grand jury, officials stated.
If convicted of the two charges in the indictment, Fazeli is facing up to 40 years in federal prison, according to authorities.
Fazeli was arrested in this case by the FBI on Feb. 14.
During a court hearing the next day, he was released on a $120,000 bond and was ordered to appear in federal court on March 26 to be arraigned.
The indictment alleges that Fazeli ran a Las Vegas-based ticket business called Summit Entertainment, which also operated under the names onlinetickets.com and pacertickets.com.
From May 2016 through at least May 2017, Fazeli solicited investors in Orange County, Houston and Las Vegas, Nevada to send about $6.2 million to Summit to purchase tickets to the 2017 Super Bowl and the 2018 World Cup.
Fazeli allegedly told investors that Summit would resell the tickets at a substantial profit and share the proceeds with the investors.
Investors wired more than $6 million to Summit to purchase tickets for last year’s Super Bowl, but after the event Fazeli failed to provide any profit distribution to investors, according to the indictment.
Fazeli allegedly falsely told the victims that the ticket sales did not go well because the NFL prohibited their resale and that he was working on a settlement with the NFL, according to officials.
According to court documents, Fazeli never purchased large amounts of Super Bowl or World Cup tickets as promised.
Instead, he used the money for gambling expenses at the Aria and Bellagio casinos in Las Vegas and for personal expenses.
The defendant is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
If he were to be convicted of the two charges in the indictment, Fazeli would face a statutory maximum penalty of 40 years in federal prison.