Two hackers stole nearly 1,000 concert tickets, mostly of Taylor Swift, to resell and earn about $600,000.

According to Variety on February 5, the Queens District Attorney’s Office, New York, announced that authorities arrested two hackers Tyrone Rose and Shamara P. Simmons last Thursday. Both were charged with aggravated theft, computer hacking, and conspiracy. Rose and Simmons stole 993 concert tickets for Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, Adele, and major events from online orders on the ticketing platform StubHub.

The office said Rose and another co-defendant, who has not been arrested or identified, worked for Sutherland Global Services, a third-party ticket seller for StubHub in Kingston, Jamaica. The two used their access to StubHub’s system to gain access to the order information security they were not authorized to access. Each ticket had a unique URL (web address) that was sent to customers for download. They collected the URL and passed it on to Simmons and another person who is now deceased. The group then resold the tickets on StubHub from June 2022 to July 2023.

Taylor Swift on stage at “The Eras Tour” in 2024. Photo: Instagram Taylor Nation

“They exploited a loophole in an overseas vendor to steal tickets to the biggest tour of the decade, then made more than $600,000,” said prosecutor Melinda Katz.

Speaking to Variety , Mark Streams, StubHub’s chief legal officer, said that upon discovering the criminal scheme, the company reported the third-party ticket seller to Sutherland, the Queens District Attorney’s Office, and law enforcement in Jamaica. It then fired the employees involved. “StubHub replaced or refunded all affected tickets and enhanced security measures to protect fans and ticket resellers,” Streams added.

According to USA Today , the issue of hackers attacking ticketing systems has been a recent one. In May 2024, entertainment company Live Nation discovered “unauthorized activities” in a third-party cloud database containing data from the Ticketmaster platform. At that time, the company was investigating a cybercriminal group that collected information on more than 500 million Ticketmaster users.

A month later, Live Nation and Tickermaster were sued for breaching customer data due to negligent security practices. The lawsuit filed in the Central District Court of California said that the information of hundreds of millions of people was being sold on the dark web for $500,000. In October 2024, Ticketmaster was again criticized for losing fans’ tickets, costing them thousands of dollars. At the time, the company blamed hackers for the incident.

In addition, many audiences were scammed when looking for intermediary tickets. According to The Guardian in April 2024, Lloyds Bank in the UK reported that more than 600 customers reported being scammed when buying tickets to Taylor Swift shows – more than any other artist. On average, each audience member lost £332 (VND 10.5 million), some cases up to more than £1,000 (VND 31.6 million). 90% of victims transacted with unknown accounts on Facebook .

The Eras Tour is Taylor Swift ’s international headline tour, which has grossed over $2 billion. The tour includes 149 shows in 51 cities around the world. The concert series kicks off in Arizona, USA in March 2023, and concludes in Vancouver, Canada in December 2024. The average ticket price is $204, but audiences can expect to pay around $1,652 if they buy back tickets, according to Variety .