Getting into the 2012 Super Bowl, though, required more than blasting his way past security, Namely, he needed something that could pass for a ticket. Kraus did some digging online and found a photo of that year’s version. In recent years, the NFL has tried to keep the ticket design a secret for as long as humanly possible to get a leg up on the counterfeiters. (The league’s ongoing partnership with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has helped cut down on the millions in illegal profits.) But Kraus was friendly with a teaching assistant at Mizzou who was a “whiz at Photoshop,” he said. Maybe, he asked, they would help him with some light forgery?
The resulting product was more than passable, but it lacked the proper weight and heft. Kraus glued the Photoshopped image onto an old ticket from a Major League Baseball All-Star Game and tucked it into the accompanying lanyard. He made his way through the metal detector at the initial checkpoint, but the bottom barcode wasn’t scanning. The befuddled ticket taker furrowed her brow, motioned Kraus off to the side, and got her supervisor on the phone. While she was momentarily distracted, Kraus considered making a mad dash into the stadium. Instead of revealing his guilt, Kraus dutifully followed orders and awaited his near-certain doom.
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