Four Guys Who Stole A Million

[1001001]

Check this out...

4 charged with hacking into concert ticket sites


By DAVID PORTER (AP) – 5 hours ago
NEWARK, N.J. — Four California men were charged on Monday with using sophisticated computer programs to fraudulently obtain more than a million tickets to concerts and sporting events and reselling them for a profit estimated at $29 million.

Although the tickets they bought and resold were authentic, prosecutors say the group used the programs to bypass safeguards meant to restrict the number of tickets that each customer can buy. According to a 43-count indictment, the four men and their company, Wiseguy Tickets Inc., devised software that impersonated individual ticket buyers to bombard online ticket services such as Ticketmaster and Major League Baseball.


http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ivXdDeMgo_ObMdWDdtcvpTKKD30AD9E64CGG1


Is anyone surprised?


What should the punishment be for something like this??

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Being banned for life from all professional sporting events.

After completing the 20-year prison sentence.

 

[Aragorn]

Punishment? Give them season tickets to the Pirates and make them go to every game?

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Punishment? Give them season tickets to the Pirates and make them go to every game?

I was going to say Nickelback concert, but same idea.

Seriously, I'd say minor punishment for each count, but make them consecutive. It's more or less scalping on steroids, which isn't really a serious crime. Yes, I realize that there are things like wire fraud in there, but that strikes me as a bit trumped up. Have them forfeit all their assets and maybe 5 years plus 20 probation seems reasonable.

 

[1001001]

That's kind of what I'm after....

Exactly how bad is this?

In scale it's huge, and extremely profitable. And for those of us who try Ticketmaster or Live Nation when we want to get tickets and end up in the nosebleed section every time, it's damned irritating.

I'm just trying to get an appropriate sense of scale here. These guys are looking at serious prison time.

I also think this is why Ticketmaster auctions or some variation of that is going to be the norm. Eliminate the middle man, let the market play out, but let the band keep the profits.

 

[FreezeC77]

So basically they were scalpers who bought and paid for the tickets legally, but used computer software they devised to 'trick' the online ticket selling systems into letting them buy in a larger bulk then the systems allow?

Sounds like the onus should be on the ticket sellers.

 

[Snaploud]

They paid real money to ticket-sellers. They sold real tickets to ticket purchasers.

I'm not seeing a need for jail-time here.

 

[Yoda]

The story headline claims the were 'hacking into concert sites', then the story proceeds to explain that they didn't hack into the site, and merely tricked it through a little ol' fashioned American...and Bulgarian... ingenuity.

Scalping fucking blows, but it's obvious why it exists. I'm amazed that those money grubbing bastards at Ticketmaster even let the scalping get to the broker market. Why not just auction all the tickets off themselves? They're going to all end up at fucking StubHub anyway. It'd probably be better than the artificial demand created by the scalpers.

But as for what these guys are being charged with.. it seems to be the same as if you wanted 8 tickets for a concert, but they only allow you to buy 4, so you call up your friend and have him try to order 4 for you while you order the other 4. That's the fraud. They just did that on a huge scale, and made mountains of money.

 

[1001001]

Exactly.

On the other hand, they are looking at more prison time than a rapist gets. That's a bit tough to swallow.

They did violate the TOS for Ticketmaster, which I assume is the "wire fraud" part. And they prevented a million people from having a shot at face value-tickets.

Really, the whole ticket distribution system is a joke. Exclusive agreements between Ticketmaster and venues prevents any kind of innovation.

I know some bands are doing their own pre-sales, where you have to pick up the tickets at the box office the day of the show. But now you see many eBay listings saying "I'll meet you at the box office" so what good does that do?

I think the auction-style sales and/or more tiered pricing (like U2 is doing) would have some impact on the "secondary market", but I don't know how much.

 

[Checkmate]

Financial crimes often seem to be punished more harshly than other crimes. People who commit armed robbery, for instance, very often gets equal if not harsher punishments than they do for flat-out murder.

Hooray for capitalist societies, I guess. We really know how to keep our priorities straight.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

They paid real money to ticket-sellers. They sold real tickets to ticket purchasers.

I'm not seeing a need for jail-time here.

They grabbed a lot of tickets BY FRAUDULENT MEANS before real fans got the chance to get them. Then they sold them to brokers who will of course inflate the price even further. That makes those tickets unaffordable.

 

[Scout101]

On the other hand, you don't have a RIGHT to access to face-value tickets for your favorite band or team. Whether it becomes unaffordable or not is not really something that the law gives a shit about.

It's pretty much basic economics. If there are 30,000 of something, and 100,000 people want it, at least a few of them will likely be willing to pay more than the face value. If the venue or act themselves won't raise the ticket prices to the level the market will bear, it's tough to come down on individuals that resell their tickets.

If I buy a pair of tickets for $100 each, and the event is sold out, and then someone offers me $200 each, where's the problem? The seller is valuing the extra money more than the event, and the buyer is valuing the event at twice what the ticket was originally worth. As long as both sides are willing, no problem.

Short of Ticketmaster cancelling all of their tickets, not sure I get the rest of the reaction. of course, since they sold the tickets already, cancelling the tickets only hurts the buyer, while the reseller would likely disappear and/or avoid repaying the buyers...