A Cuban resident in Tampa, Florida, reported on TikTok that she was a victim of a scam related to the Cubatonazo Tampa 2026, a massive Cuban music concert held on March 14 at the Yuengling Center in that city.
The user identified as Milysergio (@mileydiscastrotor) stated in a video that during the event, the organizers encouraged the audience to send a text message to the number 96551 with the word "win" to participate in a prize draw. She and her husband did so from the venue itself.
Days later, she received a call informing her that she had been selected as the winner of a travel package. "They called me and told me that I had been chosen among the winners for that trip. Because I've never won anything at all, I've never even found anything either," she said.
The supposed representative offered travel options to Cancún, the Bahamas, or a cruise, and explained that in order to receive the certificate, they needed to attend a meeting lasting between 90 and 120 minutes alongside her husband. The only prerequisite was a deposit of 49 dollars by credit card, which was supposedly refundable after the appointment.
The woman agreed, although she used her credit card instead of a debit card as a precaution. "I obviously used my credit card because if I'm going to get scammed, I don’t want them to do it so openly," she explained.
After making the payment, the promised email with the meeting details never arrived. While searching online and on TikTok, she found multiple testimonials from people who had experienced exactly the same thing. "Everything points to it being a scam. Then I started looking for videos on TikTok, and a ton of people popped up saying the same thing right away," she noted.
Following the advice of other users, he called his bank to freeze the card and avoid unauthorized additional charges. He also sent an email to the issuer El Nuevo Zol 97.1 FM, the organizer of the event, and is waiting for a response.
What upset the complainant the most was that the scam relied on the credibility of the event itself: "I am very outraged by this because I really think, how is it possible... at such a major event where there were such big artists, they themselves were the ones who said to send text messages to that number."
The scheme follows a well-known pattern of vacation fraud: scammers obtain the phone numbers of those who participated in the legitimate raffle and contact them, pretending to be representatives of the event to collect an initial deposit. Once the deposit is collected, they disappear or request additional payments.
The woman noted that in other cases, the losses are much greater: "I have seen larger amounts in videos of up to four hundred dollars or more." She concluded her account with a direct message: "Whatever you want to do, wherever you need to go, gather your money and pay for it. Don't let others live at your expense."
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