They push in the "cart": fake tickets to the Bolshoi are sold in neighborhood and school chat rooms

Ticket sales for the ballet "The Nutcracker" at the Bolshoi Theater will start on December 2. You can officially buy them only on the website or as part of an auction. Analysts, meanwhile, warn that scammers have become more active in messengers. They create fake telegram channels to sell tickets to popular plays, advertise groups disguised as neighbors or parents in community and school chat rooms, and quickly block gullible buyers. For more information, see the Izvestia article.

"After a user transfers money, they are blocked"

In 2025, a significant part of fraudulent schemes related to the sale of tickets to popular theater productions moved to messengers. First of all, in Telegram. Such data is provided to Izvestia by the .RU/.RF Domain Coordination Center.

— We have fixed the following ticket sales scheme: a fake telegram channel of the Bolshoi or other popular theater is being created. After that, scammers begin to advertise it on behalf of "neighbors" or "parents" in district, suburban or in chat rooms of educational institutions (schools, kindergartens). In such messages, there is always a mention of discounts or other attractive conditions for buying tickets. After the user transfers money, they are blocked in the fake channel. This allows attackers to gain time and deceive more people, and after a while the channel itself is deleted," data analyst Evgeny Pankov told Izvestia.

Such a scheme, the expert says, is also effective in the house chats of new residential complexes, where neighbors have not yet had time to get to know each other and easily trust messages.

Liars are also "knocking" on personal messages. One of these cases was recorded by the Lensovet Theater. The scammers created an account that visually duplicated the official channel, and massively sent out offers to buy tickets for the September screening of Macbeth.Cinema".

Now fans of the stage are being offered non-existent seats for a January evening with Alice Freundlich, bypassing the box office.

— I was told about a man who sells tickets to Alice Brunovna Freundlich's creative evening. I contacted him. He showed me two tickets with a barcode, a series, and a number. He told me that he had bought them at a closed pre-sale. The price is 6 thousand rubles per ticket. He sold for 5 thousand, which is slightly below face value, because he can't go himself. I was ready to meet in person to receive the cash. I had people who really wanted to come to this evening. They tried to transfer money to this person, and the bank blocked the operation, explaining that such transfers are currently trending for theater tickets, and they are being monitored very closely," Georgy Tsitsishvili, creator and author of the Theatrical Hanger telegram channel, told Izvestia about a recent case.

A fake ticket for a meeting with the people's artist appeared at the disposal of Izvestia — on the sixth row, although there are simply no such places in the hall.

— This is a small living room with three rows on one side and four on the other. This cannot happen in nature," the press service of the Lensovet Theater responded to Izvestia's question. — On the theater's website, sales for the event called "Evening with Alice Freundlich" on January 17 are not open. Therefore, everything that is being sold is a lie.

In the official account of the theater, fans of the people's artist's work were quick to warn. On December 1, a message was posted there asking them not to purchase tickets by hand and not to support scammers in this way. Tickets will be officially available only at the end of December, the post says.

How to buy tickets to the ballet "The Nutcracker" at the Bolshoi Theater

On December 2, sales for the most hyped New Year's performance — the ballet "The Nutcracker" at the Bolshoi Theater will start. And here, scammers and speculators are off to a low start.

— From what I see now, there are 30 active domains that are similar in spelling to bolshoi.ru which can be used for phishing or fraudulent purposes. At the same time, attackers can potentially register another 9489 domains, which also have certain similarities with the original one," Igor Bederov, founder of the Russian Internet Search company, cites the data in an interview with Izvestia.

Enterprising sellers have also become more active in messengers. For example, in the telegram channel called "Tickets to the Nutcracker at the Bolshoi Theater", which has been in existence since 2022, back in September they announced a pre-order for the 2025/26 season screenings. The cost of tickets for the fourth tier starts from 12 thousand rubles. In the stalls — from 50 thousand. The buyer will have to transfer not only the money to the stranger on faith, but also give the passport data. The "seller" promises to send the original ticket via courier after the opening of sales, and the electronic version by e—mail. At the time of publication of the article, the contact person indicated in the group had not responded to Izvestia's request.

Officially, as in the previous season, tickets for the "Nutcracker" at the Bolshoi will be available only on the official website of the theater. They will not be sold at the box office. A visitor purchasing a ticket for himself will be able to take passes for a maximum of three other spectators at the same time. It will be impossible to reissue them later.

— In the electronic ticket purchased under this special program, the name, patronymic, surname and the number of the visitor's identity document are indicated. If the data specified in the ticket, contained in the submitted document, or if there are no documents, the visitor will not be allowed to attend the performance, the theater will not reimburse the cost of purchasing the ticket. Purchased tickets cannot be reissued to other persons on the visitor's initiative. These strict measures have been taken in connection with the exclusion of any speculative schemes," the Bolshoi Theatre told Izvestia.

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Some of the tickets will be available at auction again. The schedule is posted on the Bolshoi Theatre's website.

— Last season, more than 4,500 registration requests were submitted, 3,679 users participated in the auction, which allowed 2,083 tickets to be sold. The bidding was divided into three lots: single seats up to four tickets apart, paired seats and a set of four seats side by side. This year, the procedure will be the same as last year," said the official partner of the Bolshoi Theater "Sber A", on whose site the auction is being held.

Photo: Damir Yusupov

Passport control as a measure to combat fraudsters and speculators is currently operating in the capital's theaters under the jurisdiction of the Moscow Department of Culture.

"This is one of the measures to combat fraud, so that our citizens can visit cultural institutions in a calm manner, so that there are no double seats, so that the ticket is completely legal and real," Andrei Malyshev, Deputy Minister of Culture of Russia, told Izvestia.

The regime does not work everywhere, so nevertheless, the surest way not to run into scammers is to buy tickets to theaters on their official websites. The main thing is to make sure that the address is correct, and that there is no extra sign in its name.