Two men who spent £17m on tickets they resold for a staggering £26m have been ordered to pay back a huge amount of their ill gotten gains.
Peter Hunter, 53 and David Smith, 68, ran an elaborate racket, using multiple identities and computer bots to purchase tickets for major events Ed Sheeran, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child and NFL matches in London. The two traded as Ticket Wiz and BZZ, using over 290 email addresses and different IP addresses to disguise the bulk buying.
The fraudsters then sold the tickets at inflated prizes on secondary ticketing sites like Viagogo, GetMeIn, StubHub and Seatwave. During a seven year reign of touting, the two spent £17,016,585 on tickets, which they sold on for £26,391,695.
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Hunter and Davies were arrested and taken to trial in what was a landmark case - the first trial of this nature in the UK since the National Trading Standards began investigating the reselling of tickets on the internet in 2017. At that trial, which lasted three months, Hunter and Smith were found guilty of three counts of fraudulent trading and one count of possession of articles to be used with fraud.
Hunter was sentenced to four years in prison and Smith, a former editor of the Gay Times, was sentenced to 30 months behind bars. But their woes don't end there, as the Yorkshire and Regional Economic Crime Unit (RECU) have said that the couple have three months to pay back £6,167,522.02 or face an additional eight years imprisonment.
Ruth Andrews, the regional investigations and e-crime manager for National Trading Standards, said: "Today’s result concludes a landmark case that demonstrates once and for all that dishonestly buying large quantities of tickets and reselling them at inflated prices is an unacceptable, illegal and fraudulent practice.
"All too often fans looking to buy tickets to sport events, music concerts and other high-profile events find that official tickets sell out in minutes before reappearing on secondary ticketing sites at vastly inflated prices.
"This can have a significant financial impact on consumers, and I hope this ground-breaking case helps drive long-term changes in the secondary ticketing market.
"The defendants have learnt again today that crime does not pay and their futures have been irrevocably damaged by their criminal behaviour as a result.
"We hope this sends a message to all those who chose to engage in fraud that there are severe consequences.”
Ramona Senior, the unit head for the RECU said: "Illegal and organised ticket touting can be extremely lucrative as the sheer size of these orders demonstrate
.
"It creates demand where one might otherwise not exist, driving the public into the hands of the secondary market and forcing them to pay significantly inflated prices.
"Today’s orders indicate that those making large profits from an illegal activity can expect the full weight of the law to be applied to them."
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