Fed up with ticket scams? So are some Pa. lawmakers who want to get tougher on resellers.

Frances Dwyer sent $150 to the person on Facebook who claimed to be reselling two tickets to the Luke Combs concert in July. Dwyer told the person, whose Facebook profile included photos with children dressed in Eagles gear, that she would send the other half once the Ticketmaster transfer was completed.

The tickets never came.

Instead, Dwyer, a 21-year-old Temple University student, quickly found herself blocked by the Facebook user and unsure about how to get her money back.

“I cried for like three hours,” Dwyer said Thursday. “I was just so frustrated. It was something my boyfriend and I were really looking forward to going to.”

Some Pennsylvania lawmakers are hoping that fewer consumers experience the disappointment, and often shame, that comes with getting scammed by resellers of tickets to concerts, sports games, and other events.

State Rep. Robert Matzie (D., Beaver) introduced a bill earlier this month that would add speculative ticketing, or selling tickets that are not in your possession, to a list of offenses that can result in penalties under the Commonwealth’s Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law. The Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office is responsible for enforcing that law. Breaking it can result in fines and other penalties, such as temporary and permanent injunctions.

When a consumer buys tickets that a seller does not have, “best case, you get a refund,” Matzie said at a recent hearing held by the House Committee on Consumer Protection, Technology, and Utilities, of which he is the majority chairman. “Worst case, you could lose your money. Either way, you don’t have those tickets, the ones you thought you had. You may have already booked a hotel or made travel plans.”

Of particular concern are brokers on major secondary market sites, such as StubHub and SeatGeek, that list tickets that may look real but are not. Other times, scammers create websites meant to look like Ticketmaster.com or another resale site, and sell tickets before a presale period even begins, industry officials testified at the hearing. Oftentimes, they said, the holders of the fraudulent tickets do not realize they have been scammed until they go to scan the bar code at the venue.

And this isn’t just affecting large venues and fans of superstars such as Taylor Swift or Bruce Springsteen.

More than half of the social media comments on posts advertising a Labor Day weekend SangriaFest in Allentown were from potential scammers, Curt Mosel, chief operating officer of the nonprofit Lehigh Valley event coordinator ArtsQuest, testified at the hearing.

“We can’t afford to add staff that are focused on this,” Mosel said. “It’s a losing battle.”

This summer, Dwyer said she and her boyfriend ending up buying two tickets to the Luke Combs show on the secondary market site Gametime for around the same $300 price tag she had been quoted by the scammer. And she eventually was refunded the $150 through her credit card company.

But the experience still left her shaken.

Dwyer, who has an internship in criminal justice, thought she knew what to look for in potential scams, but now she’s unsure. And afterward, she felt it was useless to report her situation, she said, beyond posting warnings on other Facebook groups.

“There is not much else I can do,” she said. “I have no idea who is behind the phone so it’s a little bit more challenging.”