NEW YORK (1010 WINS) – Two men were charged for their role in a cybercrime scheme in which they exploited a loophole in an offshore ticket vendor and resold over 900 concert tickets, the majority for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, prosecutors announced Monday.
Tyrone Rose, 20, and Shamara P. Simmons, 31, were arrested and arraigned last week on a criminal complaint charging them with grand larceny, computer tampering, and conspiracy, according to Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz.
Two individuals at a third-party StubHub contractor in Kingston, Jamaica, allegedly stole ticket URLs and emailed them to Rose and Simmons. The tickets were then downloaded and resold on StubHub at inflated prices, generating over $600,000.
After learning about the scheme, StubHub reported the fraud to its third-party customer service vendor, Sutherland Global Services (SGS), the Queens District Attorney’s Office and Jamaican law enforcement. An investigation was launched.
“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,” Katz said. “They allegedly exploited a loophole in 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.”
An investigation remains ongoing to determine the extent of the operation, including other potential co-conspirators.
According to court documents, between June 2022 and July 2023, approximately 350 StubHub orders, totaling about 993 tickets, were intercepted by two individuals working for Sutherland, a third-party contractor in Jamaica.
The Sutherland employees, Rose and an apprehended accomplice, allegedly used their access to StubHub’s computer system to find a backdoor into a secure area where already sold tickets were assigned a URL before being emailed to the purchaser.
Rose and his co-conspirator redirected the URLs to the emails of Simmons in Queens and a now-deceased accomplice who also lived in Queens.
The co-conspirators downloaded the tickets from the rerouted URLs, then reposted and resold them on StubHub for profit. Most of the stolen tickets were for events such as Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, Adele concerts, Ed Sheeran concerts, NBA games, and the U.S. Open Tennis Championships.
The individuals involved, SGS employees, "exploited a system vulnerability to fraudulently resell tickets," Mark Streams, Chief Legal Officer at StubHub said in a statement to 1010 WINS. "They were quickly identified and terminated."
"StubHub has since replaced or refunded all identified orders impacted and strengthened security measures to further protect our fans and sellers," Streams added. "We appreciate the efforts of District Attorney Melinda Katz and law enforcement in bringing these individuals to justice.”
If convicted, they each face a maximum sentence of three to 15 years in prison.