Albuquerque’s Tacos and Tequila Festival postponed

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Festival-goers say they are feeling déjà vu after the Tacos and Tequila Festival featuring Bone Thugs-N-Harmony is no longer happening in Albuquerque this weekend.

The City of Albuquerque’s Parks and Rec Department posted on Facebook Wednesday, saying, “Please note that this event is NOT HAPPENING. We repeat: THIS EVENT IS NOT HAPPENING.”

“We did not do enough research on who we were working with and it ended up turning out like this,” Vic Villa said.

Villa works for the festival organizers and he says they were scammed.

“When planning the festival, my manager, Miguel, he is the CEO of the organization putting on the concert, he reached out to who he thought was a point of contact for the City of Albuquerque and it ended up being fraudulent ended up getting scammed by this person,” Villa said.

Organizers say they have a paper trail and can show the conversations with the person they thought worked for the city.

“We actually have a bank statement saying we paid the city of Albuquerque we have texts to this person and we have a contract we have all of that,” Villa said.

Villa was able to send KOB4 copies of the contracts they signed, proving they booked bands and Balloon Fiesta Park for their festival.

However, parts of this contract don’t seem right. Multiple times they incorrectly refer to the place they are renting as “Fiesta Parkway” and the address on the rental agreement doesn’t match the address listed on the music contracts.

“It was about a week ago when the actual City of Albuquerque reached out to us saying that we never booked through them,” Villa said

Organizers then showed the city they already paid $4,400. A spokesperson from the city’s Parks and Recreation Department confirmed the bank account festival organizers sent money to doesn’t belong to the city.

Now, the city’s financial and legal teams are looking into it.

“So, we were never booked at the Balloon Fiesta Parkway, I think that’s what it was called. Which we obviously did not know that, so now we are basically rushing to lock in a new venue,” Villa said.

Villa says the festival will go on and all tickets sold will be honored on the new date.

They are just working to finalize new contracts with an actual venue and will announce the new date and location by the end of the week.