The Brief

Five miles southeast of Downtown Los Angeles lies a unique, bustling little city, self-described as “exclusively industrial.” It faced accusations of political and ecological corruption so serious that a dozen years ago the State Legislature came within a hair’s breadth of abolishing it.

The city of Vernon survived that near-death experience, which would have seen it dissolved as an independent city and remade as an unincorporated area of L.A. County. Vernon’s survival was thanks to a huge lobbying campaign by its city government — as well as business interests anxious to preserve it as a sanctuary that offered firms substantial savings to locate there. Some labor unions joined the campaign, fearful that businesses might leave a disincorporated Vernon and take with them tens of thousands of jobs for blue collar commuters that included some union members.

Ultimately, these pro-Vernon forces cut a deal with a key legislator who persuaded colleagues to let the city survive in return for its promise to reform its governance and double the size of its extremely small residential population.

The 5-square-mile city made good on those promises, but remains dogged by environmental woes:

• The South Coast Air Quality Management District estimates that Vernon’s cancer-risk rate is 40% higher than Southern California’s generally.
• Nearly 600 of approximately 1,800 businesses, located throughout the city, handle or store hazardous chemicals, mostly at high volumes, according to a city report. Records show that nearly 40 of these businesses handle high volumes of extremely toxic chemicals regulated by the state, such as ammonia and chlorine gas, whose accidental release could impact large areas.
• Long known as a transportation hub, the city is home to very high levels of truck and rail traffic. Much of the city is crisscrossed by 130 miles of railroad tracks and much of that has been contaminated by herbicides and spilled chemicals. Vernon is also laced with underground pipelines, many of which carry potentially explosive materials, according to a city report.
• Three facilities have been identified as hazardous materials release sites by the California Department of Toxic Substance Control, 25 sites have been found to have had leaking underground storage tanks. A city map shows dozens of other locations with real or suspected soil contamination issues.

As the city put it in a report to the state last year, “serious environmental conditions [including] hazardous materials storage and processing, background contamination, noxious odors, noise pollution, and truck and railroad traffic generated by the City’s pervasive industrial land uses.…. render the majority of sites throughout Vernon unsuitable for residential development.”

Soil contamination risks in Vernon, included the large contamination zone left by the Exide lead battery plant.

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Geotracker, Envirostor, Department of Toxic Substances Control, City of Vernon

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“Some people might say it’s still the same city,” said Fred MacFarlane, a media consultant who worked as the city’s spokesperson for five years during and after the disincorporation fight. MacFarlane was in this role as government reforms were being conceived and implemented.

“It is and it isn’t … The city is in much better shape from a governance standpoint.”

Former Assembly Speaker John Pérez, who led the attempt to disincorporate Vernon and is now on the board of regents for the University of California, acknowledged “positive steps” but added: “I don’t think anybody can look at this and say things have fundamentally changed.”

What has changed

Vernon is a mainly industrial area near Downtown Los Angeles and Boyle Heights.

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Since it headed off the effort led by Pérez, Vernon increased its decennial Census count from 112 residents to 222 with a new affordable housing project that opened in 2015. This added 45 new apartments to an existing total citywide housing stock of only 31 dwellings.

This summer, in a major break with tradition, the city council opened the door for developers to further expand the number of dwellings in the city dramatically — from 76 to more than 900 — by building along the city’s western edge, the area farthest removed from the heaviest industry.

Before the affordable housing project opened, Vernon’s electorate consisted mainly of city employees who were given heavily discounted rents for city-owned housing, according to court, legislative and city records. Since this was virtually the only housing in town, those in power were in a rare position to select nearly all the voters who could keep them in power and there was an expectation that those voters would do just that.

The way city officials operated had one Superior Court judge comparing Vernon to a fiefdom. The city effectively had a permanent local government with a mayor who served for decades while living most of the time in a mansion out of town. He and his wife were convicted of voter fraud and perjury for falsely claiming to live in Vernon.

Another top administrator lived in a wealthy enclave near San Francisco, flying first class to Southern California while earning $1.65 million in salary and consulting fees in a single year. Still another longtime administrator who was being paid as much as $900,000 per year pleaded guilty to misusing other public money for expenses that prosecutors said included golf outings and massages.

These extreme practices ended after the disincorporation fight. Term limits were imposed, administrators’ salaries that were once among the highest in the state were reduced to normalcy, and a lottery procedure was implemented to decide who got to move into city-owned housing when vacancies occurred.

For the first time, those holding elective office would not be able to choose their electors.

Over a decade later, city government, Vernon-style, remains unusual, dedicated to what its website calls “a public-private partnership” — meaning business plays an outsized role, with its own designated representatives serving on city commissions.

The leader of the business community says he is optimistic about the city’s ability to overcome its environmental problems. Steve Freed, a warehouse complex owner who holds the rotating chairmanship of the city’s Chamber of Commerce, said the city is “slowly and surely transitioning from heavy, heavy industry to businesses that are more environmentally friendly.”

He estimated that half of all businesses in the city now are involved with goods storage and distribution rather than manufacturing. He also said he believes the city’s polluted soils can be made safe: “I don’t know of a single site in Vernon that couldn’t be remediated.”

The outsized role of business

An aerial view of the since-shuttered Farmer John slaughterhouse and complex.

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Vernon became an industrial mecca by welcoming businesses, including those that were unwelcome elsewhere, and offering them speedy government services and discounted fees, taxes and utilities compared to what they would pay elsewhere in the state.

During the disincorporation fight, Vernon’s Chamber of Commerce quantified these discounts, asserting that Vernon businesses saved up to 2,000% on local fees and taxes and anywhere from 20% to 40% on electric bills by buying power from Vernon’s municipal utility instead of from Southern California Edison. The discounts continue, but no estimates of their current value were available.

Following the disincorporation battle, the chamber has continued to play a dominant role in city politics through the financing of city elections. Five years of campaign contribution records reviewed by LAist show that political committees sponsored by the chamber have been the only reported source of funding for city council campaigns. These committees provided financial support for the campaigns of each of the five current part-time city council members, one of whom colleagues designate as mayor. None of the candidates’ campaigns reported receiving donations from anyone else.

The city’s highest stakes race (a pivotal election)

The chamber was especially active in 2021, in the most highly contested council races since the disincorporation threat passed. Business leaders who said they feared a return of corruption that could spark another disincorporation attempt backed the recall of two council members who’d pushed for a solar and wind project on land owned by the municipal utility — a main revenue source for the city. That set off alarms because some of the backers of that project were embroiled in a corruption probe in the City of Industry. Four men still face felony charges in that case, according to the L.A. District Attorney's office, with a preliminary hearing set for latest this week for three of the defendants.

A chamber-sponsored political committee raised $78,000 for the successful recall campaign, in which the two council members denied any wrongdoing. Of those funds, $50,000 came from the national headquarters of a labor union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. One of its local branches represents workers at the municipal utility.

The sums raised were extraordinary for a city with a total electorate of only 119. The council members were recalled and replaced by others whose candidacies received financial backing from the chamber.

The recall election appears to have invigorated efforts to expand further the city’s electorate by adding housing.

A larger residential population lies ahead

The city’s new expansion plan , approved by the city council at the beginning of August, envisions Vernon’s newest residents living in a pedestrian-friendly neighborhood of mixed residential, commercial and light industrial uses on the city’s far western boundary — the area farthest removed from its heaviest industries. Most buildings in the area now are small warehouses.

Plans call for new housing in Vernon.

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The city's report on expansion includes these preliminary concept drawings for residences on two privately owned lots.

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City planners say they hope the new neighborhood would eventually mesh with other neighborhoods developing in the Arts District of Los Angeles a few miles to the north.

The city is billing the residential expansion idea in part as a good government move — a way to produce a more robust electorate better able to resist the influence of any would-be corrupters. City planners observed in the report to the state that the current population “is still inadequate to ensure good governance and to avoid the threat of disincorporation, as manipulation of a small number of voters by an individual or entity could allow for a relatively easy takeover of control of the city.”

In approving the plan, the city council took pains to assure businesses that Vernon would not be straying from its primarily industrial nature. The council voted to require future renters or condominium buyers to sign acknowledgements that they are aware of the risks of living “in an industrial area in which annoyances or inconveniences associated with proximity to industrial uses such as odors, truck traffic, vibrations, noise and other neighborhood impacts are likely to be present.”

Given the housing shortage in greater L.A., history suggests this will not be much of an obstacle. When just one of Vernon’s city-owned apartments became available this summer, the city reported that more than 170 people signed up for the lottery.

Despite the city’s moves toward government transparency, which include council meetings that are available to watch online, most of its part-time elected officials appear media-shy.

Four council members, including the mayor, did not respond to interview requests.

The fifth, Melissa Ybarra, 46, responded to questions in writing. Ybarra is the only council member who grew up in Vernon.

Asked how she dealt with the city’s environmental challenges, she wrote in an email: “As a resident, I always saw Vernon as a hub for endless economic growth and job opportunities. As a council member, I have encouraged and supported the city's direction on improving our environmental challenges.”

The backstory on the disincorporation attempt

At the time of the disincorporation attempt, it wasn’t Vernon residents who were complaining about Vernon’s corruption and pollution problems. It was people who lived in the residential cities that surround it, whose air and land its industries were also fouling.

John Pérez, pictured in a 2010 visit to Washington, D.C. when he was speaker of the California Assembly.

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They got the attention of then-Assembly Speaker Pérez, who represented Vernon and the surrounding area, and in December 2010 Pérez took the bold step of introducing the bill that would have disincorporated the city and placed it under the jurisdiction of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors as an unincorporated area — the same status held by East Los Angeles.

His move set off a political firestorm that in turn launched a big payday for lawyers and lobbyists. The city spent about $9 million to fight disincorporation, while Vernon’s chamber mounted a smaller parallel campaign. Both predicted that disincorporation would lead to a regional economic catastrophe, with businesses choosing to leave once they no longer had their discounts, resulting in the loss of tens of thousands of blue-collar jobs.

Although most of the workforce in the city was unorganized, major unions that represented slivers of the workforce, including the Teamsters, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the United Food and Commercial Workers, lined up with employers to make the same point.

The fight was bitter, and Pérez, a former union official himself, recalls being at odds with old friends from labor, confronted by strangers in restaurants, tailed wherever he went by private detectives presumably hired by the bill’s opponents, and followed by Vernon police every time he drove through the city. These experiences were painful enough that, when LAist recently asked for his recollections, he wise-cracked, “Are you willing to pay the therapist’s bills after I talk to you?”

Pérez’s legislation sailed through the Assembly. But it hit a roadblock in the state Senate, where a political rival who represented the same area objected. Then-state Sen. Kevin de León, who had lost a battle with Pérez to be Assembly Speaker before moving on to the Senate, recognized that Vernon had to change. But his method was to negotiate.

De León, now on the L.A. city council, did not respond to interview requests. De León recently decided to run for reelection despite calls for him to resign following his participation in a secretly recorded conversation that featured racist language.

To avoid disincorporation, the city agreed to de León’s demands that it make democratic reforms and agreed to hire the late John Van de Kamp, a former Los Angeles County district attorney and California attorney general, to advise it on ethics.

The result was a sea change in governance culture. In a few years, administrators’ salaries were reduced to normal ranges. The city’s top administrator, a position that once paid as much as $1.65 million annually, is now paid $349,000. Competitive elections were held. City employees were accorded job security. Term limits on elected officials were imposed. Public records became easy to obtain, a lottery was created for city-owned residences and the city agreed to create additional housing in the form of the affordable housing project on city-donated land.

Dilia Ortega, Youth Program Coordinator at Communities for a Better Environment, photographed near the now closed Exide plant. This is a stop in the "toxic tours" led by Ortega and other members of Communities for a Better Environment.

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Unfortunately, the affordable housing project wound up being in the path of airborne lead contamination from Vernon’s now-shuttered Exide battery recycling plant. The state’s Department of Toxic Substances Control is attempting to remediate.

The city disavowed only one aspect of the deal it had made with de León. Vernon city officials had pledged to make $60 million in contributions over 10 years to neighboring cities — as a sort of unofficial penance for having allowed its industries to pollute them.

Once the city’s survival was assured, Vernon’s leaders backed away from that pledge, blaming a state action that restricted access to certain funds the city had counted on to fulfill its commitment. The city instead has doled out $10 million over 12 years, according to city spokesperson Margie Otto.

De León, who had statewide political ambitions at the time, didn’t publicly object and got a nice political plum out of the abridged deal. Not only was he hailed by Vernon’s business interests, he was also treated as a hero in the neighboring city of Huntington Park, where Vernon helped pay for new synthetic turf on the main public soccer field. When it was unveiled, that turf bore the politician’s name in big letters: “Hon. Kevin de Léon Campo de Fútbol.”

James L. Jones Jr., 69, a self-described “community pastor” and a tireless advocate for Black communities in Los Angeles, was an enthusiastic supporter of Karen Bass’ mayoral bid in 2022, when she made history as the first woman, and first Black woman, to be elected L.A. mayor.

As Bass seeks reelection, Jones is supporting her again. Despite the political turmoil and criticism she has faced during her first term, Jones, known as Reverend JJ, believes she has a plan for Black progress that may not be evident, but is long range and strategic.

“I believe that in my heart of hearts, Karen’s not one of those people who follows polls,” said Jones. “In the end she’ll do what’s right for the people.”

When Angelenos elected Bass four years ago, she seemed like the right person to bridge the ideals of the post-George Floyd era and whatever moment was coming next. She was a seasoned politician — a former state legislator, congresswoman and native Angeleno with a history of grassroots organizing and coalition building in a city that was leaning more progressive.

But in 2022, there was trouble on the horizon. The nation’s Floyd-inspired reexamination of racial equity was losing ground to a growing MAGA backlash that had helped kill a major federal bill to reform policing, among other initiatives. Big blue cities like Los Angeles that had seen big protests for racial justice were being cast as chaotic and ungovernable.

Four years later, the ideals that propelled Bass’ election have taken a beating. Trump’s return to the White House has elevated long-simmering anti-“wokeness” and white resentment into federal policy. And the administration has focused special ire on California and Los Angeles, where Bass is in charge of the nation’s largest city currently led by a Black mayor.

Bass is taking a beating too. As she seeks reelection in the June 2 primary, the mayor is weathering criticism from many sides that she’s done too little about everything, from the homelessness and housing crisis that she made a signature issue to her response to the epic January 2025 wildfire that destroyed thousands of homes in Pacific Palisades, one of the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods.

Despite facing more voter uncertainty this time around, Bass is leading in the polls, with 30% support among likely voters, according to the latest survey by Emerson College Polling/Inside California Politics. While Bass’ support has jumped 10 points since March, she would have to get more than 50% of the vote to avoid a runoff with the other top vote-getter in November.

Her most formidable challengers in the crowded primary are Councilwoman Nithya Raman, a Democratic socialist to Bass’ left who is campaigning on housing affordability and a host of other progressive causes, and Spencer Pratt, a former reality show star with no political experience who skews conservative and touts cleaning up crime and homelessness. A former Bass ally, Raman pledges to do better than the mayor on reducing homelessness and increasing new housing production; Pratt decries corrupt leadership and talks chiefly about making L.A. great again, a la MAGA. Pratt and Raman are polling at 22% and 19%, respectively.

Missing from all the criticism of how Bass has fallen short is how or whether her election has benefited L.A.’s Black community. It’s a population that is rapidly continuing to dwindle — to roughly 8% today from a peak of 18% in 1970 — besieged by gentrification, stratospheric housing costs, underemployment and shrinking political representation, all of it aggravated by the racial hostility emanating from Washington. That norm-shattering phenomenon has tended to eclipse discussion of racial crises happening locally, with good reason. But politics are still local, and many Angelenos who supported Bass in 2022 hoped that electing the second Black mayor in the city’s history would help move the needle on longstanding Black problems dating back to 1992 that have reached yet another inflection point.

But public assessments of Bass by Black leaders the last four years, including this election cycle, have been muted to nonexistent. The exception is Black Lives Matter Grassroots L.A., which has routinely taken her to task for increasing police funding instead of allocating more resources to social and other services — a core part of the post-George Floyd reforms. Observers say the reticence among Black leaders is partly due to the fact that Bass has been so inundated with crises, some not of her making — especially the Palisades fire. The view that Bass committed a fatal mistake by being on a diplomatic trip to Ghana when the fires broke out has more or less defined her politically since.

That’s unfair, said Michael Guynn, a veteran social worker and community activist who lives near Florence and Normandie avenues, a famous site of the 1992 racial unrest.

“I don’t give a damn if she was out of the country — she got back when she could,” Guynn said. “They blamed her for what the fire department was responsible for.”

Then there’s the racism that dogs Black elected officials, women in particular. Pratt, who lost his home in the Palisades fire last year, has invoked Donald Trump-like rhetoric to belittle L.A.’s first Black woman mayor. That includes an official campaign poster that depicts Bass stuffed in a trash can and says “throw out Karen Basura,” the Spanish word for trash, echoing Trump’s disparaging of Somali immigrants — a demographic that includes Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar — as “garbage.”

But the takedown isn’t only coming from the MAGA right, said Genethia Hudley-Hayes, former president of L.A.’s civilian Fire Commission and a Bass appointee who stepped down in March.

“There’s always the bigotry of, ‘We rallied around this Black woman and she hasn’t performed,’” said Hudley-Hayes. “She’s not a superwoman. That’s part of the ‘I’m mad’ vote in L.A.”

Another hurdle for Bass, Guynn said, is the unrealistic expectation that she would dramatically reduce or even eliminate homelessness.

“She couldn’t get a fair break because of that,” he said, adding that “everybody hates homelessness and wants it to go away, but nobody wants to do the work.”

Homelessness certainly qualifies as a Black concern: 32% of unhoused people in the city are African American, according to the city’s latest count. Bass’ signature program Inside Safe, which seeks to get people off the street and into temporary housing, has made inroads. But the mayor’s efforts have been hampered by what City Hall observers say is a larger problem of messaging, management and oversight. The scandal involving a subcontractor accused of defrauding the city’s homeless services authority of $23 million is a painful reminder of that.

Hudley-Hayes says that it points to the need for the mayor of L.A. to be a skilled executive, a skill that Bass doesn’t have, at least not yet.

“You need collaboration, which is different from coalition building, different from the activism of Community Coalition,” she said, referring to the grassroots South L.A. organization co-founded by Bass.

Deep understanding of the roles of not just the 41 city departments but of bigger entities like the county is essential not just for running the city but for effecting racial justice as well.

“Homelessness is important, but you have to ask, what are the structures that create homelessness? It’s not just a city problem but a regional problem,” said Hudley-Hayes. “Inside Safe is a program, not a strategy.”

But being a better executive wouldn’t automatically guarantee improvements for Black people. Tom Bradley, who was mayor from 1973 to 1993, is venerated both as a coalition builder and astute manager who improved many parts of the city. But he didn’t do enough for L.A.’s Black populace. While the Black middle class flourished during the Bradley years, in part because Black municipal employment flourished, the larger working class and poor in South L.A. did not.

Hudley-Hayes argues the mayor’s lack of accountability to L.A.’s Black population as a whole is longstanding, and not unique to elected officials like Bradley or Bass. Local branches of civil rights groups like the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference — which Hudley-Hayes once led — also play a part in accountability, though they have declined notably over the years. But Hudley-Hayes notes that accountability works two ways.

“Black people have individual agency, but we have to exercise it together,” she said. “We have to pool our experience. It means nothing if we don’t demand what we want.”

Even — especially — in these trying times, and in a city with as much possibility as L.A., problems notwithstanding — those demands should still matter.

Copyright Capital & Main 2026

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Walmart will likely put its tariff refunds toward lowering store prices, executives said on Thursday, as they described shoppers who are increasingly anxious about the rising cost of fuel.

In recent weeks, visitors to Walmart's gas stations have begun to fill up with fewer than ten gallons for the first time since 2022, Chief Financial Officer John David Rainey told investors on an earnings call.

"That's an indication of stress," he said.

"We see with our customers that the high-income customer is spending with confidence," Rainey added later, "while the lower-income consumer is more budget-conscious and perhaps navigating financial distress."

The U.S. government last week began refunding tariffs payments to importers that paid higher customs fees imposed by President Trump last year before the Supreme Court struck down most of them. Walmart is now the largest retailer to suggest that it will put those refunds toward potential price cuts.

"We think that the single best return that we can have on a dollar of capital right now is to investment in the customer, invest in price," Rainey said, noting that Walmart's stores and gas stations have been drawing more shoppers looking for deals. U.S. sales grew 4.1% from February through April.

Shoppers' slightly bigger tax refunds this year seem to be offsetting some of the budget pain so far. That's according to rival retailers Home Depot, Target and Lowe's, which also held earnings calls this week. Sales at all three companies grew in the latest quarter.

The latest federal data shows spending at retail stores and online grew 5.2% in April compared to a year earlier, surpassing inflation. That means people may have spent more because of higher prices, but also because they bought more things. At gas stations, spending surged a whopping 21%, driven by higher gas prices.

Walmart executives warned that persistently high gas costs would eventually drive up the prices shoppers see at stores.

The U.S. war with Iran has snarled tanker passage through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital corridor for shipments of both fuel and fertilizer needed to grow food. U.S. inflation already jumped to its highest level in three years in April, with energy prices being a big driver. The average U.S. price of regular gas on Thursday was $4.56 per gallon, according to AAA. That's up $1.38 from a year ago.

So far, major retailers have been absorbing their growing transportation and shipping costs. Walmart on Thursday reported a notable hit to its income from higher fuel expenses. Home Depot executives told investors on Tuesday that the company might use its own tariff refunds to offset its mounting fuel costs.
Copyright 2026 NPR

With less than a month before the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup kicks off, soccer fans are scrambling to grab the last remaining tickets.

At the time of publication, there are still some tickets available for the six World Cup games hosted at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara.

But while the Bay Area hasn’t yet experienced the kind of ticket frenzy seen in other World Cup host cities, prices are still out of reach for many fans — raising concerns about how fans looking for a bargain could fall prey to scams falsely promising far cheaper tickets.

And most recently, the World Cup’s own governing body, FIFA, has drawn scrutiny from California state officials over changes to its ticketing system — following reports from ticketholders who say they have been assigned seats in a different category than advertised when they bought their tickets through FIFA’s own online portal.

“We have laws in California against misleading or deceptive business practices,” said state Attorney General Rob Bonta, who sent a letter to FIFA last week requesting a list of ticket buyers who were assigned seats in a lower category than what they purchased. “We want to learn more from FIFA in order to assess whether what was done was lawful or not.”

Bonta also expressed concern that sky-high prices could deter people from buying a ticket through FIFA’s official website or other verified vendors. Passionate soccer fans, he said, “may go into a site that isn’t as reliable and maybe they get taken advantage of.”

An Adidas FIFA World Cup soccer ball is seen on a FIFA x NFL chair in the Media Center on Feb. 4, 2026 at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

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So how can you spot a scam when buying a World Cup ticket, or just make sure you get what you pay for?

Keep reading to learn what officials recommend about buying World Cup tickets online and what to do if you already bought a ticket on the official FIFA site but feel that the seat you were assigned does not match what you originally paid for.

And rest assured: there are still plenty of ways to watch the World Cup in the Bay Area for free — or for a fraction of the cost of a Levi’s Stadium ticket, real or fake.

Remember, if something’s too good to be true …

First off: If you’re feeling confused over what a World Cup ticket actually costs, that’s understandable, Santa Clara County Assistant District Attorney James Gibbons-Shapiro said.

For this World Cup, FIFA adopted a pricing system known as “dynamic pricing,” where the cost of a seat changes based on current demand for that specific game.

The 2026 FIFA World Cup winner’s trophy is seen on stage at the Global Citizen NOW event in New York City on May 14, 2026.

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Scammers often promise you “a better deal” if you make the payment using instant payment sites like Zelle, Venmo and Cash App. But fraudsters aren’t trying to save you money with this suggestion: They’re trying to make it easier for themselves to keep your money.

Talking to strangers on a resale or payments site that’s not verified puts you at greater risk of getting ripped off, Gibbons-Shapiro said. “The criminal is simply looking for someone desperate enough to go to the World Cup that they’re willing to send a lot of money right away to a total stranger,” he said.

In other words, he said: “It’s not that the country that you are supporting is going to lose — it’s going to be you that loses.”

How do I know if the World Cup tickets I’m being offered are real?

Scammers have become incredibly good at printing fake tickets that look highly realistic, Gibbons-Shapiro said. So much so, he said, that when sports fans ask him for advice on how to spot a fake ticket, he tells them that he doesn’t have any tips that reliably work — that’s how identical the scam tickets can physically appear.

The real pro tip here, Gibbons-Shapiro said, is “don’t go to the stadium to try to buy a ticket there.”

“Because the great likelihood is that you’re buying a fake ticket,” he said. “You’re not gonna be able to get in, and you’re going to lose all your money.”

Scalpers are actually not permitted on stadium grounds — and reselling tickets near the stadium is a misdemeanor crime in California.

That’s why it’s important to buy your ticket on a third-party ticket resale site that will deliver the ticket directly to you.

Footballs and jerseys are displayed during the opening day of the official 2026 FIFA World Cup merchandising store in Miami Beach, Florida, on May 18, 2026

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Platforms like WhatsApp or Facebook Marketplace usually will not verify if what’s being offered is what’s actually sold.

And even if you’re using reliable third-party sites like SeatGeek or TicketMaster, check the reseller’s refund policy to see whether they offer a guarantee regarding the authenticity and timely arrival of the tickets.

I just got scammed buying a fake World Cup ticket. What can I do?

First of all, make sure to document all your communication with the person who promised to sell you a ticket — and take screenshots of those messages in case they attempt to delete anything from their end of the conversation.

If you were scammed online or over the phone:

You can then report the situation to your local police department, as the city where you live is defined as where the crime took place.

If you bought the fake ticket in person from a scalper: 

Contact the police department of the city where the transaction took place. “If that happened right outside the stadium, that would be Santa Clara Police Department,” Gibbons-Shapiro said.

You can also file a complaint with the California Attorney General’s office or the Better Business Bureau.

Gibbons-Shapiro said his office is ready to prosecute anyone who tricks others into buying fake World Cup tickets, adding that he would consider that to be a felony.

“We have robust teams for consumer protection and theft enforcement,” he said. “We’re going to prosecute the scammers.”

I bought a ticket on the FIFA website, and I think I got seated in a different place than what I paid for.

If you bought your ticket from the online FIFA purchasing portal during the initial sales phase last October, Attorney General Bonta recommends that you keep a record of everything from that purchase. This could include, he said, “images of the map they were shown and the original receipt for the ticket that they purchased and what it says, and the existing ticket that they have.”

You can also contact Bonta’s office to share your experience.

Bonta told KQED his office is still investigating what happened during this initial ticketing phase and hopes that FIFA provides the information he has requested by the May 29 deadline. “And if they don’t, we can ratchet up the level of severity here,” he said.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta speaks at a news conference in front of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco on Thursday, Nov. 7, 2024. (

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“It’s not something that we want to do, but we always have an ability to send civil investigative demands or subpoenas,” Bonta said.

FIFA did not respond to a request for comment from KQED. However, the organization has told other media outlets that the initial maps consumers saw last year were meant to “provide guidance rather than the exact seat layout,” and seating arrangements could be subject to change — as happened when the organization introduced new seating categories in later phases of ticket sales.

But that could potentially be in violation of California law, Bonta said.

“The law in California is that businesses and organizations cannot justify misleading practices by pointing to the fine print or other terms that an everyday reasonable consumer would not have seen or understood,” he said. “If you’re told something, then you’re entitled to rely on the representation and to trust what you were told.”

The attorney general’s office could seek some civil penalty if its investigation concludes that the rights of California consumers were indeed violated, Bonta said. “Then we could help those individuals get the ticket that they actually purchased, not the one that they received after they were misled.”

But the investigation is still ongoing, he said.

This story first appeared on The LA Local.

At the five-point intersection connecting Boyle Heights and East LA, one Memorial Day tradition has brought the communities together for 80 years.

The Memorial Day tribute at the Mexican American All Wars Memorial returns Monday, giving veterans and their families a space to honor service members of Mexican descent who died in war.

The event kicks off with a 24-hour vigil starting at 10 a.m. Sunday, when veterans will stand guard through the night ahead of Monday’s annual event.

“Memorial Day in Boyle Heights and East LA is way different than any other memorial or ceremony because there were a lot of men and women who went to World War II and Vietnam from this area,” said Joe Diaz, a co-organizer for the event.

Elected officials, including LA County Supervisor Hilda Solis, Senator Maria Elena Durazo and Council District 14 Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, are set to give remarks. LA Mayor Karen Bass is also expected to attend. 

LAPD officer and military veteran Kioni Smith is set to be the keynote speaker. A flyover from the Los Angeles Police Department Air Support Division and a colorguard performance are also scheduled. 

Cinco Puntos was the starting location of the first Chicano Moratorium, a march in protest of the Vietnam War on December 20, 1969, according to the Los Angeles Conservancy. The war memorial pays tribute to the strong presence of the veteran community on the Eastside, the L.A. Conservancy adds. 

Event Details:

The 80th Memorial Day ceremony at the Mexican-American All Wars Memorial in Boyle Heights.

Location: 3300 E. Cesar E. Chavez Avenue

Time: 10 to 11 a.m.