Two online ticket touts who made millions reselling tickets for high-profile events including Ed Sheeran concerts and the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child play have been found guilty of fraudulent trading. Peter Hunter and David Smith tricked selling sites over two-and-a-half years, buying £4 million worth of tickets that they sold for £10.8 million.
Leeds Crown Court heard that the married couple used multiple identities and computer bots to harvest large numbers of tickets for events, which they then sold on secondary ticketing sites such as Viagogo, GetMein, StubHub and Seatwave at inflated prices. The prosecution, brought by the National Trading Standards eCrime team, is the first of its kind in the UK since it began investigating ticket reselling online in 2017.
Prosecutor Jonathan Sandiford told the jury that Hunter and Smith were 'dishonest fraudsters motivated by greed'. The court heard that they deployed at least 97 different names, 88 postal addresses and more than 290 email addresses to evade platform restrictions. Ed Sheeran's manager Stuart Camp told jurors the singer had decided to take a stand against touts after spotting £75 seats at a charity gig on sale for £7,000.
Hunter and Smith, both from north London, argued they did nothing wrong. Hunter's defence team said they were a trusted source of tickets with thousands of positive reviews. Ben Douglas-Jones QC, for Hunter, said his client was no more greedy than other businessmen providing a service and that he accepted breaching terms and conditions but that was not a criminal act.
Hunter, 51, and Smith, 66, of Crossfield Road, were both found guilty of fraudulent trading and possessing an article for fraud. Granting them bail until sentencing, Judge Mushtaq Khokhar warned the men they could be jailed.
