Ticket Scammers Beware!

It looks like Ticketmaster is starting to really go after ticket resellers who circumnavigate their security measures to ensure ticket buyers legally buy their tickets.

A 43-count indictment has been handed down to the owners of California-based Wiseguys Ticket and two others who prosecutors claim hacked into Ticketmaster’s ticketing system to buy large sums of tickets only to resell them illegally.

According to New Jersey’s The Star-Ledger, “Kenneth Lowson, 40, of Los Angeles, is the co-founder of Wiseguy Tickets Inc., which authorities said used software that impersonated individual ticket buyers and bombard online ticket services including Ticketmaster and Major League Baseball.” The report goes on to state, “authorities said Lowson and his three co-defendants committed fraud by using 100,000 internet protocol addresses, a variety of company names, hundreds of e-mails and a web of credit-card numbers to hide the fact that all the tickets were being bought by a single company — not individual fans. According to the indictment, they also committed a variety of computer crimes by using an army of online drones to circumvent security systems and enter ticket-selling websites ahead of fans. When Ticketmaster and other companies beefed up security, Wiseguy devised different ways to break through, authorities said.”

The New York Daily News reported, “The defendants figured out a way to automate CAPTCHA, allowing them to complete a blizzard of purchases in seconds and beat fans to good seats, the feds said. They made $29 million reselling 1.5 million prime tickets to ticket brokers, sometimes at $1,000 markups, prosecutors said.”

CNN reported “The indictment alleges the men were aware the specialized network “made it nearly impossible for the average consumer to buy the best seats to the most popular events,” the release says. Prosecutors cite a July 2008 Bruce Springsteen concert at New York’s Giants Stadium in which they say Wiseguys bought up nearly half the 440 floor seats made available to the public. According to the release — citing internal company reports — the Wiseguy employees gloated over the massive purchase, calling the success “straight domination,” and saying they bought the “best ringsides by far.”

A couple of the defendants are currently out on bail, and prosecutors are trying to keep co-owner Lowson behind bars, arguing that he may be a flight risk due to his offshore accounts. The other defendant is currently in Indonesia, negotiating his surrender. If found guilty on all counts, they would spend five years in prison (conspiracy charge) and 20 years in prison on each of the wire fraud charges.

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