Two men arrested for counterfeit State Fair tickets

Richard Hazeltine, Michael Horaas: Forgetting the State Fair spirit.

​The Minnesota State Fair is a time for Minnesotans of all walks of life to come together -- including, it seems, the most sleazy among us.

In separate cases, two men are being investigated for the sale of counterfeit tickets for the fair.

Richard Hazeltine, of St. Paul, was arrested for his role in a fake ticket scam on Monday. That makes him the second man caught in the same crime, joining Brooklyn Park's Michael Horaas. Horaas was arrested at the Northtown Mall parking lot in Blaine on Saturday, where he was selling fair tickets that cops say are bogus, the Pioneer Press reports.

There's no word yet on how many fake tickets might have gone out, but those who'd bought them were disappointed in the short-term: The State Fair's pretty good at weeding out bum tickets, and buyers would've been turned away at the gates.

Horaas has not been charged yet, and Hazeltine is being held in Ramsey County Jail for an unrelated DWI offense, and a prior warrant that alleged he was in possession of burglary tools.

Horaas' suspected operation was discovered after people trying to enter the fair were rejected for bad tickets, and told fair employees they'd bought them at the mall parking lot.

State Fair officials told the Pioneer Press that fair goers should only ever buy tickets from State Fair employees at the fairgrounds themselves.

There's no amount of deep fried anything that will make up for the misery of getting duped.