Two individuals have been arrested in New York for stealing and re-selling tickets to high-profile events and concerts, including Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, pocketing $635,000 in one year.
Through an elaborate scheme, the duo stole 993 digital tickets from 350 StubHub orders and re-sold them for personal profit. The majority of the tickets were for the Eras Tour, but also targeted Adele and Ed Sheeran concerts, NBA games, and the US Open Tennis Championships.
The operation ran from June 2022 to July 2023. Tickets for the Eras Tour went on sale in November 2022, and quickly snowballed into an international frenzy that drove up ticket prices to thousands of dollars per seat, USA Today reports.
One of the individuals, 20-year-old Tyrone Rose, had access to StubHub’s computer systems through his employment at Sutherland Global Services, a third-party contractor for StubHub based in Jamaica. He and another unapprehend accomplice intercepted emails intended for ticket buyers that contained a URL for them to download their tickets. He found “a backdoor into a secure area of the network” where the system was queuing these emails before sending them out, according to Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz.
Rose went in and re-directed the URLs to the emails of his co-conspirators, 31-year-old Shamara P. Simmons of Queens, New York, and another now-deceased accomplice. Simmons then downloaded the tickets and resold them on StubHub for a profit.
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StubHub identified the crime and told the District Attorney’s office about it so they could make the arrests. Rose and Simmons have been charged with grand larceny in the second degree, computer tampering in the first and fourth degree, and conspiracy in the fourth degree. They face a maximum sentence of three to 15 years in prison. The investigation is still ongoing, and may find more illegal activities or co-conspirators.
StubHub has terminated its relationship with Sutherland Global Services, according to The New York Times. It says the employee exploited a system vulnerability and was “swiftly identified and terminated.” StubHub says it has replaced or refunded all the orders affected by the scheme, and doubled down on security.
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About Emily Forlini
Senior Reporter
