A ticket-reselling operation used a network of fake accounts to bypass Ticketmaster’s security protocols to grab hundreds of thousands of tickets to hugely popular tours for artists like Taylor Swift and Bruce Springsteen and then re-sold them for millions, federal regulators said Monday. The Federal Trade Commission alleges the operation used illicit software that masked IP addresses, as well as repurposed credit cards and SIM phone cards, as part of the scheme.It was run through various guises, like TotalTickets.com, TotallyTix and Front Rose Tix, but was run by three key individuals, the agency said. In total, the group is accused of buying 321,286 tickets to 3,261 live performances from June 2022 to December 2023, in bunches of 15 or more tickets to each event at a total cost of approximately $46.7 million and then reselling them for $52.4 million, netting approximately $5.7 million. |
