14 DAY TRIAL // Three men who instrumented a scheme that relied on bypassing system restrictions to automatically buy tickets in bulk from legit distributors, pleaded guilty to fraud and hacking charges.
The scheme ran under the cover of several companies, but its primary front was a firm called Wiseguys Tickets, through which the fraudulently acquired tickets were resold for a profit.
The owners of Wiseguys Tickets, Kenneth Lowson, 41, and Kristofer Kirsch, 37, of Los Angeles, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and exceed authorized access to computers engaged in interstate commerce.
Joel Stevenson, 37, of Alameda, California, who acted as the company's IT administrator and principal programmer, pleaded guilty to exceeding authorized access to computers engaged in interstate commerce.
Lowson and Kirsch face maximum sentences of five years in prison and fines of up to $250,000, while Stevenson faces one year in prison and a $100,000 fine.
The operation ran from 2002 until 2009, prosecutors estimating that during this time, Wiseguys made profits of almost $29 million by reselling over 1.5 million tickets.
The defendants used a network of computers spread across the United States, which ran software designed specifically to circumvent protection mechanisms used by ticket vendors like Tickets.com, Musictoday or Ticketmaster, to block bulk purchases.
In order to ensure a fair distribution, these companies restrict the number of tickets single individuals can acquire through their online systems.
The Wiseguys software imitated legit buyers by using fake data and even solved the security challenges, commonly known as CAPTCHA, used in order forms.
As an example of the scheme's success, prosecutors said that during a July 2008 Bruce Springsteen concert at Giants Stadium, Wiseguys managed to buy half of the tickets available for the General Admission floor.
Several civil rights watchdogs, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), expressed disapproval of this criminal case, saying that it should be treated as a contractual dispute, like any terms of service violation.