{"id":144552,"date":"2020-12-31T02:07:51","date_gmt":"2020-12-30T23:07:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/ticketmaster-agrees-to-10m-criminal-fine-for-spying-on-a-rival\/"},"modified":"2020-12-31T02:07:51","modified_gmt":"2020-12-30T23:07:51","slug":"ticketmaster-agrees-to-10m-criminal-fine-for-spying-on-a-rival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/ticketmaster-agrees-to-10m-criminal-fine-for-spying-on-a-rival\/","title":{"rendered":"#Ticketmaster agrees to $10M criminal fine for spying on a rival"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Ticketmaster agrees to $10M criminal fine for spying on a rival<\/strong>”
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Ticketmaster has agreed to cough up $10 million to avoid prosecution on charges that it repeatedly accessed a smaller rival\u2019s computer systems in order to \u201cchoke off\u201d the competition.<\/p>\n

Ticketmaster will escape prosecution on a litany of federal raps \u2014 ranging from wire fraud to computer intrusion \u2014 for three years. It also agreed to implement controls to better protect against employee hacking, according to the deal finalized Wednesday before Brooklyn federal court Judge Margo Brodie.<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said the alleged spying occurred between 2013 and 2015 when a Ticketmaster executive offered his boss access to his old company\u2019s computer systems.<\/p>\n

That employee, who sources say is Stephen Mead, joined Ticketmaster\u2019s Artist\u2019s Services division in Aug. 2013 after working for two years at UK-based startup Songkick, whose assets were later purchased by Ticketmaster\u2019s parent company, Live Nation Entertainment. <\/p>\n

The feds say that Mead, who could not be immedia<\/a>tely reached for comment, shared his old Songkick passwords with his new boss at Ticketmaster, Zeeshan Zaidi, and others at the company. <\/p>\n

\u201cScreen grab the hell out of the system,\u201d he allegedly told Zaidi and another exec in 2014. \u00a0<\/p>\n

Zaidi pleaded guilty in October 2019 and is awaiting sentencing on charges of conspiring to commit computer intrusions and wire fraud. <\/p>\n

Songkick specialized in a process of pre-buying tickets and then setting aside a certain percentage for fans before general<\/a> ticket sales begin, which was supposed to help reduce scalping.<\/p>\n

Ticketmaster employees allegedly used Mead\u2019s access to \u201cchoke off\u201d Songkick\u2019s business. They created, for example, a spreadsheet to track which artists Songkick was targeting so they could engage with them about staying at Ticketmaster, the feds said. <\/p>\n

They also communicated with colleagues that they were aware they should not be accessing Songkick\u2019s systems, prosecutors said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cTicketmaster terminated both Zaidi and Mead in 2017, after their conduct came to light,\u201d a Ticketmaster spokesperson said in a statement. \u201cTheir actions violated our corporate policies and were inconsistent with our values. We are pleased that this matter is now resolved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Songkick, which sued Ticketmaster in 2016 for an antitrust violation, was acquired by Warner Music Group in 2017 in a deal that included everything but the company\u2019s ticket sales business.<\/p>\n

Live Nation settled the suit for $110 million in 2018 and then acquired Songkick\u2019s ticketing business for an undisclosed sum.\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Ticketmaster agrees to $10M criminal fine for spying on a rival” Ticketmaster has agreed to cough up $10 million to avoid prosecution on charges that it repeatedly accessed a smaller rival\u2019s computer systems in order to \u201cchoke off\u201d the competition. Ticketmaster will escape prosecution on a litany of federal raps \u2014 ranging from wire fraud…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":144553,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2020\/11\/ticketmaster-01.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[88149,72166,71434,5276,71006,88214],"class_list":["post-144552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-12-30-20","tag-brooklyn-federal-court","tag-courts","tag-entertainment","tag-fraud","tag-ticketmaster"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}