New York prosecutors say that two people working at a third-party contractor for the StubHub online ticket marketplace made $635,000 after almost 1,000 concert tickets and reselling them online.
As the prosecutors explain, the vast majority of stolen tickets were for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. However, the criminals also targeted other high-value and high-profile events, including Ed Sheeran concerts, Adele concerts, NBA games, and the US Open Tennis Championships.
The two defendants, 20-year-old Tyrone Rose and 31-year-old Shamara Simmons, worked for Sutherland Global Services in Jamaica and stole the tickets by allegedly intercepting approximately 350 StubHub orders by exploiting a loophole in the platform of an offshore ticket vendor.
‘The Sutherland employees, defendant Tyrone Rose and an unapprehended accomplice, allegedly used their access to StubHub’s computer system to find a backdoor into a secure area of the network where already sold tickets were given a URL and queued to be emailed to the purchaser to download,” said Queens County District Attorney Melinda Katz.
“Rose and his co-conspirator re-directed the URLs to the emails of co-conspirators Shamara Simmons in Queens and a now deceased accomplice who lived in Queens.”
The investigation is still ongoing, with prosecutors trying to determine the extent of this operation, including other potential co-conspirators yet to be discovered.
The Sutherland employees were arrested in New York City and arraigned on Thursday on a criminal complaint charging them with grand larceny in the second-degree, first-degree computer tampering, fourth-degree conspiracy, and fourth-degree computer tampering.
If they’re found guilty, they each face a potential maximum sentence of three to 15 years in prison if convicted of the top count.
“According to the charges, these defendants tried to use the popularity of Taylor Swift’s concert tour and other high-profile events to profit at the expensive of others,” District Attorney Katz added.
“This takedown highlights the vigilance of my office’s Cybercrime and Cryptocurrency Unit as well as the importance of working with our industry partners to combat fraudulent activities and ensure the protection of consumers.”