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Fort Worth Race Costs Runners More Than The Entry Fee

FORT WORTH (CBS11) - A Utah race event company is looking into fraudulent credit card charges reported by runners after they entered an event in Fort Worth. The company said it was aware of 14 reports so far, and was working with a third-party payment processing company owned by PayPal to track the issue.

In posts to the Facebook page for the Halloween Half, runners reported charges from as far away as the Vatican gift shop, a café in Iowa and a parking garage in Chicago. Some runners started noticing the charges in the days ahead of the race, run at Fort Worth's Gateway Park Saturday.

Halloween Half Marathon fraud
Halloween Half Marathon fraud

It was the first Halloween themed run for FundRacer Events, said owner Ken Richardson, and the first time his company had ever run across the problem.

"We're working with Braintree and PayPal to make sure we find out the details of those transactions and dig in to anything that needs to be taken care of," he said.

Katie Minter, who flew in from Nevada to run with friends, said her entire group found charges on their cards.

"When the three of us had it, it really couldn't be a coincidence" she said.

Almost 900 people entered the race. Richardson said his company was reaching out individually to everyone who had posted online that they were affected.

FundRacer has run other events in North Texas, including the Color in Motion 5k, and the Great Inflatable Race.

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