Scalping law? What scalping law?

The ticket scalping business is thriving in Massachusetts, right under the noses of the law enforcement officials who are supposed to keep it in check.

Street scalpers, particularly around Fenway Park during the baseball season, ply their trade with impunity, often in plain view of police officers. On the Internet and at brick-and-mortar locations around the state, ticket resellers charge far more than the law allows, and the Romney administration does next to nothing, saying enforcement is not a core priority.

It's a frustrating charade for many fans, some of whom are unable to purchase tickets when their favorite band or sports team puts its tickets on sale and then find themselves priced out of the market when ticket agencies and street scalpers start reselling tickets to the event.

Debbie Lacey of Stoneham was horrified when she discovered that students from Tulane University she had taken in after Hurricane Katrina had thanked her by paying a ticket agency $424 for Red Sox tickets with a face value of $42.

``They're in business to make money, but there's no way they should be making that much," Lacey said. ``That's obscene gouging."

Many hard-core fans don't view scalping as a victimless crime but instead see themselves as the victims. They believe that if the antiscalping law were enforced, fewer tickets would make their way into the resale market and more would be available at lower prices for regular fans.

``It shouldn't cost a king's ransom for a guy to go with his family to a ballgame," said Joe Boucher , a Red Sox fan from Portland, Maine. ``Scalping is against the law. The law should be enforced."

Yet the law is brazenly ignored by scalpers and law enforcement alike. The Boston Police Department made only four scalping arrests this baseball season through Sept. 10 at Fenway Park, the latest statistics available. The Romney administration's Office of Public Safety, which licenses and regulates ticket resellers, acknowledges it has never disciplined or audited the books of a single company. No attorney general has targeted scalpers since Scott Harshbarger in 1994.

``I've gone to every government agency that seems to have a stake in ticket scalping, and no one wants to do anything about it," said Colman M. Herman , a Dorchester activist who has sued a handful of ticket agencies and street scalpers on his own. ``I've written the mayor and he says ticket scalping is not tolerated by the Boston Police Department, which is ridiculous. The police do absolutely nothing."

Part of the problem is the state's antiquated antiscalping law. It was passed in 1924, before the Internet and such online marketplaces as eBay and StubHub were even envisioned. The law doesn't prohibit ticket purchases above face value, but it requires anyone in the business of reselling tickets in Massachusetts to obtain a license from the Department of Public Safety and limits markups to $2 above face value, plus certain service charges.

The law defines service charges as the cost of such things as messages, postage, and long distance phone calls, but not the ``general business operation" of the reseller. A 1988 court decision also held that any premium over face value the reseller pays to obtain a ticket is not an acceptable service charge.

Officials with the Boston Red Sox, the local sports team with the biggest scalping problem, say their focus is limiting the supply of tickets on the resale market.

``What we're trying to do is take every step possible to get tickets into the right hands," said Michael Dee , chief operating officer of the Red Sox.

To deter scalpers, the Red Sox have limited how many tickets can be purchased at one time and held lotteries for people who want to buy tickets. The Sox have also reduced group ticket sales and required people who buy game-day tickets to enter the park immediately .

The Sox website makes it easy for season ticket holders to resell tickets they can't use -- at face value. The Replay system resold 30,000 tickets this past season, about 1 percent of Sox seating capacity.

One thing the Sox have not done is aggressively revoke the season tickets of those caught scalping their seats. During the 2005 season, a sting run by the club caught five season ticket holders scalping seats; their punishment was no access to postseason tickets. Dee said the Sox wanted to do another sting this season but dropped the idea after the club's late-season fall in the standings, which diminished ticket demand.

The Globe volunteered to do its own sting, but Sox officials declined to identify the original purchaser of any scalped tickets. Tracing who scalped a set of tickets is difficult, the officials said, since tickets are often passed around many times before being resold.

Public Safety Commissioner Thomas Gatzunis , the state official in charge of licensing and regulating ticket resellers, refused repeated requests for an interview. His office issued a statement saying that while enforcement of the antiscalping law ``is not directly related to our core mission, we make every effort to prevent scalpers from victimizing consumers."

Last week, ticket resellers licensed by Public Safety were selling tickets to the Nov. 5 New England Patriots-Indianapolis Colts game for prices well above what the law allows. Tickets with a face value of $125 on the 50-yard line were going for $625 at Ace Ticket of Boston, $660 at Out of Town Ticket Agency in Cambridge, and $910 at Boss Tickets in Amesbury.

All three agencies said they have to pay a steep premium to get the tickets they resell and would be forced out of business or out of state if they couldn't pass their acquisition costs along to customers.

Sheldon Cohen , the owner of Out of Town Ticket Agency, noted the $2 markup allowed by the state antiscalping law is far less than the fees Ticketmaster charges on most initial ticket sales. For example, a $49 standing-room-only ticket to the Dec. 17 Patriots-Houston Texans game comes with Ticketmaster fees totaling $11.25.

``The law has to be corrected," Cohen said.

Ace Ticket appears to be more afraid of lawsuits by private citizens like Herman than it is of investigations launched by Gatzunis. Ace's sales policy states that anyone purchasing a ticket must agree not to sue the company for violating the state's antiscalping law and must file all complaints with Gatzunis's office.

Jim Holzman , president of Ace, said he inserted the clause earlier this year on the advice of his lawyer after a lawsuit filed against his company by a Sharon resident was voluntarily dismissed by the parties.

Just as state regulators have turned a blind eye to the resale of tickets by brokers and websites, Boston Police have largely stopped arresting street scalpers.

Police arrested two scalpers in 2005 around Fenway Park. Of the four arrests this past season, one case was dismissed, two of those arrested defaulted on court dates, and the fourth case is pending.

Boston Police Captain William B. Evans , who was recently appointed to oversee the Fenway Park area, said arrests are way down because of an injunction issued in 1999 that barred police from arresting people unloading a spare ticket at face value.

``Everyone has the perception that we're not enforcing the law, but our hands our tied by that injunction," Evans said.

At the time of the injunction, the police had a policy of arresting anyone reselling a ticket. But federal Judge Joseph L. Tauro ruled that a Canton veterinarian reselling a spare ticket at face value wasn't violating the scalping law. He said the police needed to focus on people turning a profit by selling tickets above face value without a license.

Although professional scalpers are easy to spot, the police rarely bother to arrest them. The Red Sox pay for a police detail for each home game that includes two officers assigned to scalping. But police and Red Sox officials say the officers rarely go undercover and spend most of their time shooing scalpers away from the park.

Before one game in August, Boston Police Sergeant Detective Daniel Keeler walked down Brookline Avenue toward Kenmore Square. His arrival disbursed a cluster of scalpers, which then re-formed about 20 yards away. Keeler insisted he couldn't make arrests without witnessing an illegal transaction.

The Globe witnessed many such transactions and even participated in some. On Aug. 18, a Globe reporter bought two bleacher seats to a Red Sox-Yankees game from longtime street seller Donald E. Foley Jr. of West Roxbury. The tickets, with a face value of $21, cost $175 apiece.

Interviewed later, Foley said the police indifference to scalping is a double-edged sword. ``I liked it better when it was a crime because there was a lot less competition," he said. ``Now everybody's a scalper and 99 percent of them are doing it on the Internet."

Bruce Mohl can be reached at mohl@globe.com.