Ex-Ticketmaster boss sentenced for hacking rival company CrowdSurge

Stephen Mead – the previous Ticketmaster head who hacked CrowdSurge’s servers – has been sentenced for his crimes that contributed to the corporate’s collapse.

Mead beforehand labored for CrowdSurge as their senior vice chairman for world operations and common supervisor for North America. He was then employed by Ticketmaster. In keeping with the prosecution (per BBC), throughout his time on the ticketing big, Mead allegedly accessed CrowdSurge’s system with IP addresses registered to Ticketmaster not less than 25 occasions between August 2013 and December 2015.

The Division of Justice said that Mead’s actions contributed to the downfall of CrowdSurge. He pleaded responsible to conspiracy to commit laptop intrusions in opposition to the corporate in June and was now ordered to pay $67,970 (£52,000) as a forfeiture and was additionally sentenced to a 12 months’s supervised launch.

In keeping with court docket papers which had been filed within the US, Ticketmaster executives requested Mead to share “aggressive intelligence” about CrowdSurge and its practises. Mead went on to share confidential CrowdSurge spreadsheets, entry to the corporate’s password-protected data – which he was quoted as saying to “screengrab the hell out of the system”, and mentioned easy methods to lower off “CrowdSurge on the knees”. Mead additionally shared real-time ticket gross sales knowledge and the identities of the performers the corporate was working with.

Mead’s co-conspirator and boss – former Ticketmaster government, Zeeshan Zaidi – beforehand pleaded responsible to expenses of conspiracy to commit laptop intrusions and wire fraud again in 2019.

Whereas working for the ticketing big, Mead was promoted because the director of shopper companies in Ticketmaster’s artist companies division, in 2015 and reported on to Zaidi.

In keeping with the Division of Justice, the CrowdSurge data was utilized by Ticketmaster as a approach to plan aggressive responses in efforts to realize pre-sale ticketing enterprise and evaluate merchandise and choices.

The information of Mead’s sentencing comes after the latest Oasis reunion ticket fiasco which noticed thousands and thousands flocking to attempt to seize tickets and plenty of – together with Louis Tomlinson – being left disillusioned after a number of points arose.

Some who did ultimately handle to get by the queues had been then disillusioned to see the price of remaining tickets had elevated attributable to Ticketmaster’s dynamic pricing coverage; a course of which sees costs hiked up attributable to excessive demand.

The ‘dynamic pricing’ quickly led to widespread backlash. In addition to numerous followers, politicians like Tradition Secretary Lisa Nandy additionally weighed in, calling for a evaluation of the coverage and secondary ticket websites. Equally, Twickets introduced a U-turn on their stance – capping their reserving payment at a most of £25 per ticket – whereas Mark Davyd, CEO of the Music Venue Belief (MVT), used the scramble as a approach to spotlight the struggles confronted by grassroots venues.

A whole bunch of followers then launched complaints to the Promoting Requirements Affiliation (ASA) over surge ticket pricing, debate arose about whether or not the shortage of warning might have been a breach of client regulation, and followers celebrated Robert Smith for combating Ticketmaster to maintain The Treatment ticket costs inexpensive.

Finally, Oasis addressed the controversy – distancing themselves from the worth hikes and asserting that they might be taking part in two further exhibits at Wembley, however this time with a lot stricter guidelines in place for ticket gross sales.

Lately, the UK’s largest client champion model Which? has referred to as for Ticketmaster to refund followers who had been hit by the surprising surge in costs for “in demand” tickets to Oasis‘ 2025 reunion tour.

In keeping with screenshots offered to Which? by followers affected by the dynamic pricing, Which? claims that Ticketmaster’s pages confirmed no indicators of inflated costs being carried out throughout the sale.

Which? has additionally said that it believes Ticketmaster’s “lack of transparency” about its dynamic pricing “might have breached the Shopper Safety from Unfair Buying and selling Rules (CPRs) as many followers weren’t knowledgeable concerning the will increase till after that they had already tried so as to add cheaper tickets to their baskets”.

“Oasis and Ticketmaster ought to do the proper factor and refund followers who might have been misled into paying over the percentages for tickets that might have been half the worth simply hours earlier,” mentioned Lisa Webb, Which?’s client regulation professional in an announcement.