Several counties in Florida have turned to Eventbrite, a service better known for booking venues for conferences, sporting events and a range of personal gatherings, to help distribute vaccines to residents. . After hearing about such an attempt in Sarasota County, Bourbonniere searched and found similar vaccine signs in her own county on Eventbrite. But there was a problem: her county was among those who used the platform for recordings.
“I found the Sarasota site and used the location button to get to events near me,” said Bourbonniere, who told CNN Business that she came across several listings in Clearwater, Florida, a city in Pinellas County. She then tweeted at the Florida Department of Health in Pinellas County to ask why Clearwater had a “74 Eventbrite list for Covid vaccine”, many of which were sold out, despite controversial information on a website of the county.
The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office told CNN Business that they are currently looking at the false use of Eventbrite for COVID vaccines in Pinellas County, adding that the pages appear to have been taken down.
In a statement to CNN Business, a spokesperson for Eventbrite said: “We are actively exploring how our platform can support the effort to increase access to vaccines. We are aware of non-vaccine event listings. We believe that these events were created in error and removed from our site. We are constantly monitoring and taking appropriate action. “
When asked why Eventbrite believed the events were created by mistake and how much it took away from its site, the speaker declined to comment on the statement.
But the mosaic approach to vaccine circulation in Florida seems to have created an opportunity for bad actors to scam residents with fake health department lists, both in places that are Eventbrite use for vaccine circulation and in non-vaccine areas. It is unclear who is behind the lists and what the reasons are. But at least it only adds to the potential for more misinformation and confusion about the vaccines and their distribution.
The Florida Governor’s Office and the Florida Department of Health did not respond to CNN Business’s requests for comment.
Like other online platforms, Eventbrite has long struggled with bad actors suspected of deceiving users. When Eventbrite prepared to go public in 2018, the company warned in their IPO papers “that we have experienced fraudulent activity on our platform in the past, taking includes fraudulent events in which a person sells tickets to an event but does not intend to hold an event or fulfill the ticket. ”
At least three of the counties that use Eventbrite for vaccine circulation – Pasco, Collier, and Sarasota – have recently adopted lungs on stage.
According to Chase Daniels, executive director at the Pasco Sheriff’s Office, he is “working on about a dozen complaints made to us by the Department of Health-Pasco County regarding fraudulent pages that provide false vouchers to individuals,” confirming that there was no exchange of the money. “The investigation into these fraudulent vouchers is still ongoing,” Daniels said.
In addition to concerns about fake lists, some Florida residents, including former residents who may be so tech-savvy, are now left to the digital ticketing platform led in the hope of landing one of the limited numbers of available vaccine spots.
After 77-year-old father Khalid El Khatib received a vaccination order through Eventbrite in Sarasota, he became a family bond. El Khatib told CNN Business that he and his two sisters signed calls for Eventbrite in the hope that he would be able to score between the four of them when the next wave of releases opened.
El Khatib compared it to how you might try to land tickets for a “popular concert,” but with a lot more involved.
“The only way I can get information is by being an educated, young and relatively connected New Yorker,” said El Khatib, speaking generally about coronavirus safety measures. “I think it speaks to the inequality that is emerging through all stages of this pandemic.”
She and her 68-year-old husband, a retired engineer with a medical condition, were described by Bourbonniere, a retired doctor-level nurse who specialized in geriatrics. chest, as a very tech savvy person. But within the 65+ community where she lives, Bourbonniere said there have been mixed messages about how to register for the vaccine, which can be upsetting for residents who he is both more vulnerable to Covid and more vulnerable to misinformation about him.
“That’s what worries me,” she said.