Two individuals allegedly tied to a cybercrime crew have been arrested for the theft of more than 900 concert tickets, the majority of which were for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour.
The Queens District Attorney’s Office charged Tyrone Rose and Shamara Simmons for their involvement in an alleged scheme in which they exploited a loophole through an offshore ticket vendor for StubHub. According to the prosecutors, they intercepted already-sold ticket URLs by accessing the company’s network and resold them.
The duo, who return to court on Friday to enter their plea, were charged on Feb. 27 with grand larceny, computer tampering and conspiracy. They face sentences of three to 15 years in prison if convicted. The investigation was referred to referred to prosecutors by StubHub, which didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
From June 2022 to July 2023, roughly 350 StubHub orders for nearly 1,000 tickets were stolen the cybercrime crew, some of whom worked for Sutherland, a third party contractor in Kingston, Jamaica. They used their access to StubHub’s computer system to find a backdoor into the network where sold tickets were given a URL and queued to be emailed to the purchaser, according to prosecutors. The stolen URLs were then emailed to others involved in the scheme who downloaded the tickets and resold them on StubHub. They allegedly made over $600,000.
Most of the tickets were for high-profile artists, including Swift, Adele and Ed Sheeran, as well as NBA games and the U.S. Open Tennis Championships.
The investigation remains ongoing to determine the extent of the scheme and other participants. In their announcement, prosecutors referred to accomplices, one of whom remains unapprehended and another whom is now deceased.
In a statement, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said, “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.”
Average ticket prices for Swift’s Eras Tour was $529, according to live event ticketing technology company Victory Live. The priciest locations were at Indianapolis ($3,071), Miami ($2,578) and Vancouver, Canada ($2,952).
Over the course of 21 months, the tour sold a total of $2,077,618,725 in tickets.
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