A former Ticketmaster boss who illegally accessed a rival firm’s laptop servers to steal info has been sentenced.
British nationwide Stephen Mead stole delicate information from CrowdSurge – a smaller enterprise he had beforehand labored for – between 2013 and 2015. His actions instantly contributed to the corporate’s collapse, the Division of Justice, in New York, mentioned.
Mead pleaded responsible to conspiracy to commit laptop intrusions in opposition to CrowdSurge, in June. He has now been ordered to pay $67,970 as a forfeiture (about £52,000), and sentenced to a 12 months’s supervised launch.
Court docket papers filed within the US state Ticketmaster executives had requested Mead to share “aggressive intelligence” in regards to the firm.
Ticketmaster – which describes itself because the world’s greatest leisure ticketing platform – didn’t reply to the BBC’s request for remark.
One other former Ticketmaster govt, Zeeshan Zaidi, additionally pleaded responsible to fraud prices of conspiracy to commit laptop intrusions and wire fraud in 2019. He’s but to be sentenced.
Mead was ordered to pay again a sum he acquired when he left CrowdSurge, in addition to the pay rise he subsequently acquired at Ticketmaster.
A Overseas Workplace spokesperson advised the BBC: “We’re offering consular help to a British man within the US and are in touch with the native authorities.”
CrowdSurge – a web site on which artists may promote pre-sale tickets to followers – was a rival ticketing firm to Ticketmaster, with its headquarters in London and a US workplace in New York. US court docket paperwork say the corporate had an estimated worth of greater than $100m.
From 2010, Mead was CrowdSurge’s senior vp for international operations and basic supervisor for North America.
The BBC has seen court docket paperwork that state that when Mead left CrowdSurge in July 2012 he signed a “separation settlement”, which acknowledged he should not retain or share any confidential info – together with consumer lists, and advertising and marketing methods – with any third social gathering.
In keeping with the court docket submitting, the settlement additionally stipulated Mead mustn’t work for an additional ticketing firm for a 12 months and, as a part of the association, CrowdSurge paid Mead roughly $52,970.
However he repeatedly breached the separation settlement, the court docket papers say.
By the summer season of 2013, Mead was employed by Ticketmaster’s guardian firm, Dwell Nation, in a division referred to as TicketWeb.
CrowdSurge laptop server logs present no less than 25 cases when its firm information was accessed by computer systems with IP addresses registered to Ticketmaster and related firms in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, between August 2013 and December 2015, the prosecution acknowledged.
‘Lower off CrowdSurge on the knees’
In keeping with the prosecution, Mead shared CrowdSurge spreadsheets containing monetary info and passwords with out permission, and accessed aggressive details about the corporate’s shoppers and know-how on the request of Ticketmaster executives.
He additionally provided different Ticketmaster staff with info that enabled them to entry password-protected CrowdSurge info. He suggested them to “screengrab the hell out of the system”, and mentioned “minimize[ting] off CrowdSurge on the knees”, court docket paperwork present.
Additionally they state that on one event, at Zaidi’s request, Mead gave a presentation to no less than 14 Dwell Nation and Ticketmaster executives and staff throughout which he used a CrowdSurge username and password to log in to their web site with out authorisation. Throughout the presentation – which was projected onto a big display in a convention room – Mead demonstrated one in all CrowdSurge’s bespoke merchandise referred to as the Artists’ Toolbox – a web-based information analytics package deal for music artists.
Throughout his employment, Mead additionally shared real-time ticket gross sales information and the identities of the performers CrowdSurge was working with.
The DoJ says the data was utilized by Ticketmaster to plan aggressive responses to win pre-sale ticketing enterprise and evaluate merchandise and choices. It added Mead’s actions led to financial losses for CrowdSurge, which “have been notably important in a extremely aggressive enterprise surroundings”.
It says Mead was later promoted to turn into director of consumer companies in Ticketmaster’s artist companies division, in early 2015, reporting on to Zaidi. He additionally acquired a pay rise.
Court docket paperwork say Mead didn’t have interaction within the prison conduct to personally revenue from the scheme, past the profit he acquired by enhancing his standing and place inside Ticketmaster.
CrowdSurge found Mead’s hacking after a former Ticketmaster govt began working for the corporate in 2015 and warned them to alter how their techniques could possibly be accessed.
Mead’s employment was terminated by Dwell Nation and Ticketmaster round October 2017.
Court docket paperwork present Mead left the US in 2019 and returned to the UK. He was arrested in Italy earlier this 12 months and extradited to the US.
Authorized motion
In 2015, CrowdSurge’s guardian firm, Full Leisure Sources, filed a civil lawsuit in opposition to Ticketmaster alleging it dominated the market and “tried to destroy competitors within the artist pre-sale ticketing companies market in quite a lot of other ways”.
These included “blocking” quite a few artists from working with SongKick – an organization CrowdSurge had merged with in June 2015 – and utilizing its market energy to “pressure” them to work with Ticketmaster as a substitute.
Ticketmaster and SongKick settled their authorized dispute in 2018, leading to Ticketmaster paying $110m to the homeowners of SongKick and shopping for SongKick’s ticketing know-how for an undisclosed quantity.
Ticketmaster entered right into a deferred prosecution settlement with the Division of Justice in New York after pleading responsible to 5 prices of fraud in 2020. This course of includes an organization reaching an settlement with a prosecutor, the place the corporate is charged with a prison offence however proceedings are robotically suspended.
The ticketing large was fined $10m and agreed “the place obligatory and acceptable to switch or preserve its current compliance program”.
The DoJ confirmed Ticketmaster accomplished the phrases of the deferred prosecution in July 2024.