NEW YORK (AP) – Some of the hottest tickets in town – to Broadway hits, Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake concerts, a New York Yankees-Boston Red Sox game – were snapped up by an international ring of cyber thieves who commandeered more than 1,000 StubHub users’ accounts to make big money by fraudulently buying tickets and reselling them, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Ten people around the world have been indicted or arrested in connection with the case, which involved more than 3,500 tickets and at least $1.6 million in unauthorized purchases of sought-after seats, some to sold-out shows or behind the Yankee Stadium dugout, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said.
“Today’s arrests and indictment connect a global network of hackers, identity thieves and money-launderers” who targeted the leading digital marketplace for reselling event tickets, Vance said. The scheme spooled from Russia to London to Toronto to the New York area and even to Barcelona, Spain, where accused Russian ringleader Vadim Polyakov was arrested while vacationing earlier this month.
The case comes amid growing concern about data thieves targeting consumer giants, and it pointed up pitfalls customers may face in using one password in multiple parts of their online lives.
StubHub said it was alerted to “a small number of accounts that had been illegally taken over by fraudsters” last year, contacted authorities and gave the affected customers refunds.