Ticketmaster has agreed to pay a $ 10 million fine after being repeatedly accused of illegal access to a competitor’s computer systems between 2013 and 2015 in an attempt to “prevent”. [the company] on the knees. “
A subsidiary of Live Nation, the California-based ticket sales and distribution company, used the stolen information to gain an advantage CrowdSurge – which merged with Songkick in 2015 and was later acquired by Warner Music Group (WMG) in 2017 – by hiring a former employee to break into the tools and gain insight into the company’s operations.
“Ticketmaster employees have repeatedly – and illegally – accessed a competitor’s computers without permission using stolen passwords to unlawfully collect company information,” said acting US attorney Seth DuCharme.
“Furthermore, Ticketmaster employees brutally held a division-wide ‘summit’ where the stolen passwords were used to access the victim company’s computers, as if that were an appropriate business tactic.”
The allegations were first reported in 2017 after CrowdSurge sued Live Nation for antitrust violations, accusing Ticketmaster of accessing confidential business plans, contracts, customer lists and credentials from CrowdSurge tools.
According to court documents released on Dec. 30, Stephen Mead, who was hired by Live Nation in 2013, shared the passwords with Zeeshan Zaidi, the former head of Ticketmaster’s Artist Services division, and another Ticketmaster employee. to Artist Toolbox, an app that provided real-time data on tickets sold through the victim company.
In addition to password theft, Mead is also accused of providing “internal and confidential financial documents” that he kept from his former employer, as well as URLs for ticket sales concept web pages to find out which artists wanted to use CrowdSurge to sell tickets and ‘discourage them ‘of doing this.
On October 18, 2019, Zaidi pleaded guilty in a related case of conspiracy to commit computer break-ins and wire fraud for his participation in the plan, stating, “We are not supposed to tip anyone that we have this opinion about [the victim company’s] activities. “
An unnamed Ticketmaster director said in an internal email that the goal was to “steal” and “steal” his signature customers by reclaiming pre-sale ticket sales for a second major artist who was a customer from CrowdSurge.
Both Mead and Zaidi are no longer employed by Ticketmaster.
Ticketmaster previously settled a lawsuit filed by Songkick in 2018 by agreeing to pay the company’s owners $ 110 million and acquire the remaining intellectual property that was not sold to WMG for an undisclosed amount.
In addition to paying the $ 10 million fines, Ticketmaster is expected to maintain a compliance and ethics program to detect and prevent such unauthorized acquisition of its rivals’ confidential information.
The company will also be required to provide an annual report to the US Attorney’s Office for the next three years to ensure compliance.