Ticket Scalpers Making Enemies of Some White House Tourists

You're visiting Washington. And, of course, the kids would love to see the inside of the president's home. So you and the family trudge to the White House Visitor Center, on Pennsylvania Avenue NW, where thousands of free tour passes are handed out five mornings a week. But every available ticket is gone. Others have beaten you to them.

Other tourists, yes.

But also scalpers.

"The problem is escalating to an outrageous degree," Tom Peyton, a U.S. Park Service official who helps manage White House tours, said yesterday.

For years, street entrepreneurs have made fast money by standing in line for White House tour passes, then peddling them for as little as $5 and as much as $50, officials said. But the crime has become so common in recent months that the U.S. Park Police began a crackdown this week.

"There's big money to be made," Peyton said of ticket scalping.

Plainclothes officers arrested three men Tuesday and another Wednesday after the men allegedly sold tour tickets to passersby outside the Visitor Center, in the 1400 block of Pennsylvania Avenue NW. Thousands of tickets are given away at the center on a first-come, first-served basis Tuesdays through Saturdays from 7:30 a.m. until the day's supply runs out. The men were charged with illegal vending, a misdemeanor.

People begin standing in line for tickets as early as 5 a.m., and by 6:30 a.m., the line often is a block long.

According to police, scalpers who stand in line for tickets can get as many as four per person. Then, after the center's supply has run out, the scalpers hawk the tickets to tourists downtown, often on street corners and in front of hotels. Sometimes the scalpers sell outdated or bogus tickets.

The Visitor Center gets about 1,000 complaints a week about ticket scalping from tourists. Some of the tourists are upset at seeing tickets hawked by scalpers who were ahead of them in line.

The complaints escalated this summer, Peyton said. He said some tourists stormed into the center, demanding to be reimbursed the money they paid to scalpers for outdated tickets.

"That's when I realized how bad it was," Peyton said.

Peyton said the Park Service has been trying to improve ticket distribution since the operation moved from the Ellipse to the Visitor Center when the center opened in 1995. In March, for example, the number of tickets handed out per person was reduced from six to four.

Dave Rogers, 34, of Niles, Mich., said he was surprised to be approached yesterday morning by a half-dozen people offering to sell him White House tickets for $5 to $10 apiece. Rogers and his wife, Cheryl, who were waiting near the White House for a tour, had picked up free tickets at the Visitor Center earlier that morning.

"It's a national park -- foundation of the nation -- and supplemented by tax dollars," Rogers said of the White House. "I think it's wrong."

Peyton, the Park Service official, said that a few months ago he began noticing four-wheel-drive vehicles pulling up to the Visitor Center during the morning hours when tickets are distributed. The drivers of the vehicles -- apparently the leaders of scalping operations -- were "directing" groups of people in the line, Peyton said.

"I think it's outrageous," he said.

John and Rose Colligan, of East Brunswick, N.J., said they bought their White House tickets from a hotel concierge for $15. The Colligans said they were not aware that tickets are free. "I thought you paid for admission," John Colligan said.

Yesterday, Frank A. Lee, 70, stood near the Visitor Center trying to interest passing tourists in the $20 van tour offered by Diplomat Tour Sightseeing, which he said includes a White House tour and visits to the Vietnam Veterans and Lincoln memorials and Arlington National Cemetery.

Lee said he hires people to stand in line at the Visitor Center to obtain tour tickets for him. He needs them for his business, he said.

"Nobody is going to take my tour if they can't get into the White House."

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.