Photo Credit: FlyD
Two individuals have been arrested for their role in the cybercrime theft of over 900 concert tickets, most for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.
District Attorney Melinda Katz in Queens, NY announced this week that two individuals have been arrested and arraigned in connection with the cybercrime theft of over 900 concert tickets. Most of these tickets were for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, allegedly stolen by two individuals working at a third-party contractor for StubHub in Kingston, Jamaica.
The ticket URLs were then emailed to two co-conspirators in Jamaica, Queens, who downloaded the tickets and resold them on StubHub for personal profit. All told, the conspirators made more than $600,000 in one year on the scheme.
“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 expense of others,” said District Attorney Katz. “They allegedly exploited a loophole through an offshore ticket vendor to steal tickets to the biggest concert tour of the last decade and then resold those seats for an extraordinary profit of more than $600,000.”
“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,” DA Katz continued. “I thank StubHub for alerting us to this important case and encourage any Queens resident who may have been a victim of a cybercrime to contact our Cyber Crimes team.”
20-year-old Tyrone Rose of Kingston, Jamaica, and Shamara P. Simmons, 31, of Jamaica, Queens, were arrested and arraigned on Thursday. They were charged with grand larceny in the second degree, computer tampering in the first degree, conspiracy in the fourth degree, and computer tampering in the fourth degree. Criminal Court Judge Anthony Battisti ordered the defendants to return to court on March 7, with each facing a potential maximum sentence of three to 15 years in prison if convicted. The investigation remains ongoing.
According to the charges and investigation, DA Katz said that approximately 350 StubHub orders from between June 2022 and July 2023 resulted in around 993 tickets being intercepted by the StubHub hackers. The two individuals accused — Tyrone Rose and an unnamed accomplice — worked for a third-party contractor in Kingston, called Sutherland.
The Sutherland employees allegedly used their access to StubHub’s system to find a backdoor into a secure part of the network where already sold tickets were assigned a URL to be emailed to the purchaser. Rose and his accomplice re-directed the URLs to be emailed to Shamara Simmons, and a now-deceased accomplice in Queens.
Simmons and the other individual downloaded the tickets from the re-routed URL and posted the tickets to StubHub to resell them for profit. The overall proceeds from the scheme are valued at around $635,000, mostly from high-value events like Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, Adele and Ed Sheeran concerts, NBA games, and the US Open Tennis Championships.
The value of Taylor Swift tickets makes them a hot item for scammers to target. At their most expensive, Taylor Swift Eras Tour tickets went for nearly $3,100 in Indianapolis, almost $3,000 in Vancouver, BC, and over $2,500 in Miami.
Content shared from www.digitalmusicnews.com.