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2 months ago
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Photo by Erika Goldring/TAS24/Getty Images for TAS Rights Management
The Federal Trade Commission is suing a summons broker for allegedly utilizing “illegal means” to bargain up hundreds of thousands of unrecorded lawsuit tickets, including for Taylor Swift’s Eras tour. Key Investment Group, which besides does concern arsenic Epic Seats, TotalTickets.com, and Totally Tix, is accused of violating the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act by utilizing virtual and accepted recognition paper numbers, on with spoofed IP addresses, fake accounts it paid existent radical to make, and banks of SIM cards utilized to person verification texts to numbers it controlled, to get astir information protections.
Key Investment Group past allegedly resold these tickets connected secondary ticket-selling sites and Ticketmaster’s resale level to radical who couldn’t bushed its alleged service of accounts to bargain them directly. The FTC’s suit is portion of a broader clampdown connected unrecorded lawsuit summons sellers successful the US.
In the suit filed connected Monday, the FTC claims Key Investment Group bought $57 cardinal worthy of tickets from Ticketmaster successful conscionable implicit 1 year, portion reselling them astatine a “significant markup” for $64 million. The reseller allegedly purchased 2,280 of Swift’s Eras Tour tickets from March to August 2023 for astir $745,000 and resold them for astir $1.9 million. During this time, the FTC claims Key Investment Group utilized 49 accounts to bargain 273 tickets to Taylor Swift’s March 25th performance astatine Allegiant Stadium successful Las Vegas successful 2023, “dramatically exceeding” the six-ticket limit.
Key Investment Group refutes the suit successful a statement released connected Monday, saying the FTC has “twisted the intent” of the BOTS Act and is utilizing it arsenic a “weapon” targeting concern and consumers. “Under the FTC’s interpretation, anyone who purchases much than 4 tickets oregon uses much than 1 relationship could beryllium deemed successful usurpation of national law,” Key Investment Group claims. “The FTC misleadingly characterizes KIG’s [Key Investment Group] usage of modular net browsers to acquisition tickets arsenic equivalent to deploying unlawful software.”
English (US) ·