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Axl Scam Thwarted
A booking for a solo Axl Rose concert at a Lafayette, La., nightclub turned out to be the work of a scam artist, but the club ended up without a loss because the scammer was apparently disorganized.
The entertainment coordinator for 307 Downtown, Chad Fouquier, told The Daily Advertiser the May 26th booking didn’t raise any red flags initially. A show by Rose would have been a coup for the 250-300-capacity venue, as staff had heard rumors Axl was planning a promotional tour to repair his image.
Fouquier said the bogus contact was knowledgeable enough to drop names from Rose’s agency (presumably
“The way the contract is worded, it protects the show from any bad incidents,” Fouquier told the paper prior to the show. “If Axl doesn’t show, if he drinks, if he doesn’t play for any reason, he owes us what we paid to get him here, what we paid to put on the show, plus interest.”
Venue management then mailed a check for the deposit on Good Friday, as requested, to a Chicago-based company, Fouquier said. The Advertiser ran a front-page story on the show, announcing tickets would be $35.
Fouquier was reluctant to say who the con artist was, and would only say that the amount sent to the phony was significant.
Meanwhile, Rose’s camp got wind of the phony booking and e-mailed 307, wanting to know why the club was spreading false information.
That’s when club officials knew they’d been scammed.
“The good news is they might have gotten a little sloppy when they had us deliver the deposit on Good Friday,” Fouquier told the paper. “[It] hasn’t been cashed, and we stopped payment on it. We ended up walking away scott-free on the whole deal.”
Club officials notified authorities in Chicago, Orlando and the Federal Bureau of Investigation about the alleged scam artist and are expecting legal action.