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Music

A Guy Pretended to Be Adele's Manager to Get Kendrick Tickets

You sort of have to admire the attempted finesse.
Lauren O'Neill
London, GB

We've all told white lies to get something we want, haven't we? "Ah can we go somewhere else? I had a burrito yesterday" to deter a date's Mexican food proclivity because you'd rather they didn't taste of onion when you snog them. "I actually can't make it to the work team building day because I've got my cousin visiting from America" because you'd rather rot in bed watching a cracking series of Time Team than be forced into sumo-suit wrestling with the big lad from accounts again. It's understandable. We, as humans, are innately selfish. We can't help these little untruths spilling out sometimes.

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But sometimes those white lies, well, they spiral. And in the case of Justin Jackson and his wife Angel Lii, "It'd be cool to go to the Kendrick show, how can we get tickets?" turned into "Maybe we should pretend to be someone important?" which ultimately turned into "Hi, I am definitely Adele's manager whose name is Jonathan Dickens and I was wondering if you would be so kind as to gift me, Jonathan Dickens, some passes for the Kendrick show?" A masterclass in spiralling, indeed.

The story goes that Jackson and Lii have been posing as Dickens for the last year, via a bogus email address, to request concert tickets and memorabilia from various artists' management. And they weren't fucking around with small-fry shit either – among those reportedly contacted were reps for Rihanna, Drake, Chris Brown, Usher, Katy Perry and Pharrell. Eventually those reps began to smell a rat, and Dickens was contacted, later reporting it to the police.

Jackson and Lii were eventually caught when detective Stephen Kaufman set up a sting, where he posed as a production manager from whom Jackson could collect the passes. This, kind of inevitably, led to his arrest, and he and his wife have now been charged. However, it's not the first time that Jackson's taste for music has gotten him into hot water: previously he spent two years in jail for impersonating a representative for Madonna and convincing a New York shop to loan him $2.7 million (~£2 million) in jewellery, which he later sold to a pawn shop in Florida.

Later, in 2014, he was sued by former basketball player Reggie Love, then an aide to Barack Obama, for impersonating him in attempts to get free stuff including but not limited to "gift cards from the Cheesecake Factory, and clothes and handbags from Juicy Couture," according to the Miami Herald. But truly, the pièce de résistance was a lawsuit brought by Oprah's production company, also in 2014, when he posed as her nephew, all in the name of getting shit for no money. Illegal, yes, of course, but also you kind of do have to admire his unerring dedication to the finesse?

So, I don't know man. Maybe the next time you think about telling a lie to get something you want, you should keep Justin Jackson in mind. You should think, "is this lie alright?" and you should think, "could this lie feasibly lead to me eventually becoming so fond of free stuff that I will one day literally pretend to be Adele's manager, literally defrauding him, in its pursuit?" And if the answer is 'yes,' you probably should not tell the lie. Other lies, smaller ones that don't have the potential to ruin lives and reputations probably, are fine. Morality 101.

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(Image via Wikimedia Commons)