When a Mountain View family of four showed up at Disneyland last week, they were forced to shell out even more money to enter the gates of Happiest Place on Earth because they’d been scammed on Craigslist.
And 25-year-old David Kao of San Francisco was arrested on Wednesday on two counts of theft by false pretenses, along with and transportation of marijuana for sales and transport. He was booked into the San Jose Main Jail, according to Mountain View police Sgt. Saul Jaeger. He would not elaborate on what evidence links Kao to the scam, only saying that detectives used “good old-fashioned” police work to track him down.
Kao’s arrest follows a doubly expensive visit for the family to a place that already charges about $10 for a caramel apple.
The parents bought four Park Hopper tickets to Disneyland for $500 on Craigslist, thinking it was a good deal for them and their two children, Jaeger said. Disney tickets are about $100 per adult for one day, and an extra $39 to bounce between the main park and Disney California Adventure Park.
But when they showed up at the Anaheim theme park on Feb. 12, they presented their tickets at the counter, only to find out they were invalid, police said. The tickets were real, police said, but they hadn’t been activated by the store where they were bought. And “unfortunately,” police said in a statement, this family ended up having to pay for passes in addition to the ones they thought they already had.
Jaeger wasn’t sure how much the family spent in all, or whether the suspect would have to pay them back if he is convicted of the charges.
