Shaun Nixon has made his living for years selling bogus concert and sports tickets on Craigslist. He has left a long trail of victims.

Now, a Toronto judge has given him a ticket straight to jail.

Nixon was picked up Jan. 20 on a warrant for being unlawfully at large. Four days later he pleaded guilty to three counts of fraud under $5,000 and possession of fraudulent identification. He was sentenced to six months in jail.

The last time the 30-year-old went to jail, he was back to selling fake tickets the afternoon he was released.

In fact, he was out peddling bogus tickets to Leafs and Raptors games through ads on Craigslist, when police picked him up for being on the lam from the Mimico Correctional Institute.

“Awesome. I'm happy they got him,” said Anna Kemen, a Toronto waitress who was scammed for $600 for four non-existent Leafs tickets to the Feb. 3 game with the Carolina Hurricanes. “Now if we can only get our money back.”

Kemen and her boyfriend, both laid off before Christmas, had worked hard to save for the tickets to celebrate their first anniversary. Like the other victims, the couple responded to an ad on Craigslist.

Nixon's arrest came as the Star was looking into complaints from victims. We answered an ad on Craigslist for tickets to the Feb. 16 Raptors game against the Miami Heat. Nixon, who used the alias Ryan Tellert, asked for $600, but quickly dropped the price to $400.

He lived in Gull Lake, Sask., he said, but he and his wife couldn't make it to Toronto for the game. Tickets to that game are a hot item because it will mark the first appearance in Toronto of former Raptors all-star Chris Bosh since he bolted from the team last year.

The emails stopped abruptly after his arrest. Police laid five charges of fraud, reduced to three in court in exchange for a guilty plea. When arrested at a library in Hamilton, Nixon was carrying bogus Quebec ID in the name of Robert Cook.

The extent of Nixon's most recent con is just starting to emerge as word of his arrest and his aliases begins to spread. He is the subject of extensive Internet postings by victims, all of whom fell for a scam he's perfected over the past six years.

They send the money. The tickets don't appear. The thief disappears.

Using a variety of aliases, including Ryan Tellert, Robert Cook and Sarah Lambert, Nixon gets victims to wire him the money, asking that they provide him with the transfer code number. If would-be buyers balk, he sends them the bar codes purporting to be on the tickets.

Jeff Majcenic, a computer savvy businessman who owns his own company said he is angry with himself at getting scammed. “I'm a business guy. I do my work, but I let my guard down and I got taken.” Majcenic paid $600 for Leafs tickets that simply did not exist.

In email exchanges with the Star, Nixon asked payment for the tickets be wired to him through Western Union and to email him the transfer code. In return he would courier the tickets immediately. With the transfer code and a piece of photo ID Nixon can pick up the money at most Western Union office worldwide.

The manager of a Western Union outlet on Hamilton Mountain confirmed someone named Ryan Tellert had picked up three wire transfers totalling more than $600 just days before he was arrested.

“He's been here several times before” said the manager. “If he's got the code and ID there, I have to give him the money.”

A spokesperson for Western Union corporate headquarters says the company “warns people to send money only to people they know.”

Craigslist also attaches a standard warning to every ad posted on its site offering tickets for sale. It reads:

“Beware of any deal involving Western Union, MoneyGram, wire transfer, cashier's cheque, money order, shipping escrow, or any promise of transaction protection certification guarantee.”

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But still people kept sending money to a person they did not know for tickets they never saw.

The Star investigation showed Nixon was emailing his victims via the computer network at Mohawk College. He was once a computer technology student there.

In 2007 he pleaded guilty to defrauding 92 people of roughly $18,000 for bogus tickets and was sentenced to a year in jail. His victims were across North America.

Nixon lured his victims by advertising coveted tickets to NHL games, pop concerts and even the tapings of shows like Dancing with the Stars and the 2007 Academy Awards ceremony.

It was a complaint from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that prompted that police investigation four years ago — tickets to the Oscar ceremonies are by invitation only and are not for sale.

“We need to send a message out that this won't be tolerated,” Justice Don Cooper said in sentencing Nixon to a year in jail at the time.

Nixon apparently didn't get the message.

“We suspect there are more victims out there but we moved quickly ... because we knew his history,” said Isabelle Sauvé, an investigator with the Competition Bureau working with the Toronto police fraud squad.

Sauve said people have the misconception that because they use reputable firms to transfer the money that the system will protect them. “The reality is that unless you make the transaction face to face, there is nothing that protects you.”

Nixon, a chubby round-faced scammer, also frequents the online dating site plentyoffish.com, signing on numerous times a day looking for love connections under the moniker “Hotbluerocker.”

“I know what I want in life and that is to be happy settle down and share my life with someone. I love to talk,” Nixon posted recently.

Dale Brazao can be reached at dbrazao@thestar.ca