New York hackers stole $845,000 in Taylor Swift ticket scheme, district attorney says

NEW YORK – Two people accused of stealing and reselling more than 900 tickets to American singer Taylor Swift’s The Eras Tour and other marquee events are facing criminal charges for their role in the scheme, New York prosecutors said.

Several people were involved in hacking into the computer system of the online ticketing platform StubHub starting in mid-2022, said Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz in a statement on March 3. They then resold the tickets on the same platform for a profit, which added up to US$635,000 (S$845,000).

Tyrone Rose, 20, of Kingston, Jamaica, and Shamara Simmons, 31, of the New York City neighbourhood of Jamaica, Queens, were arrested and arraigned in Criminal Court in Queens on Feb 27. The lawyers listed for them in court documents did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Rose and Simmons were charged with second-degree grand larceny, first-degree computer tampering, fourth-degree conspiracy and fourth-degree computer tampering.

Rose worked for an outsourcing company in Kingston, Sutherland Global Services (SGS), which was contracted by StubHub, according to the criminal complaint.

Rose and a co-worker, who has not been arrested or publicly identified, used their access to part of StubHub’s ticketing system to find a way into a secure part of the network that they were not authorised to use, where information about ticket orders was stored.

Each order was given a unique web address, or URL, that was sent to the ticket buyers, who would then use the link to download their ticket. Rose and his co-worker were able to alter the e-mail account information for the orders, redirecting the URLs to accomplices, including Simmons and a person in Queens who has since died, the criminal complaint said.

The recipients of the stolen URLs would download the tickets and resell them for profit on StubHub, according to the complaint. Between June 2022 and July 2023, the group intercepted about 350 StubHub orders for approximately 993 tickets.

Most of the tickets were for expensive events, including The Eras Tour, concerts by English singers Adele and Ed Sheeran, National Basketball Association games and the US Open, the complaint said.

Mr Mark Streams, StubHub’s chief legal officer, said in a statement that once the company spotted the scheme, it reported it to SGS, Ms Katz’s office and law enforcement in the country of Jamaica.

“The individuals involved, employees of SGS, exploited a system vulnerability to fraudulently resell tickets,” he said. “They were swiftly identified and terminated.”

Mr Streams said that StubHub had replaced or refunded all orders affected by the scheme and strengthened its security measures.

StubHub said it has ended its relationship with SGS, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ms Katz said in a statement on March 3 that the charges showed that Rose and Simmons, who are due in court on March 7, “tried to use the popularity of Taylor Swift’s concert tour and other high-profile events to profit” at the expense of others.

The investigation into the ticket theft – including the extent of the operation and others who were potentially involved – is ongoing, prosecutors said.

The Eras Tour lasted 21 months and sold more than US$2 billion in tickets. The frenzy for tickets led to exorbitant prices on the resale market and left fans vulnerable to scammers.

In Canada, two people were arrested in recent months in connection with a ticket scam that Toronto police said cost Swift fans nearly US$70,000, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the country’s public broadcaster. One person was accused of posting tickets for sale on Facebook Marketplace, but never delivering the tickets to the buyers.

In Britain, Lloyds Banking Group said in 2024 that more than 600 of its customers had reported that they were victims of an Eras Tour ticket scam and that each person had lost an average of £332 (S$570). The bank said it estimated that 3,000 people in Britain were victims of those scams, based on how many of its customers were affected. NYTIMES