There's a new effort to crack down on cyber ticket scalpers that buy thousands of concert tickets at a time and then resell them at outrageous prices.

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Lisa Fallah, of Woodbury, says she tried to buy tickets for Billy Joel's August concert at Nassau Coliseum. Within a minute or two, she says they were all gone.

She ended up buying tickets on a website for about three times the face value.



"It was about $400," she says. "Multiply that by three people, that's $1,200 to go to a concert. You know, it's really not fair to people."

Sen. Charles Schumer blames what are called bots, sophisticated computer programs that allow brokers to buy huge blocks of seats as soon as they become available. The brokers then sell them on the secondary websites.

He says that for very popular concerts, the vast majority of seats never even make their way to the legitimate market.

"This is not the American way," he says. "These people are cheating."

Schumer is proposing a bill that outlaws the ticket bots. Users would face hefty fines and websites that sell tickets bought using bots would be shut down.

He says he has bipartisan support for his bill in Congress and the backing of numerous performers, including Long Island resident Billy Joel.