A court in Leeds has heard how Lynda Chenery, 51, and Mark Woods, 59, both of TQ Tickets Ltd, exploited the love and passion of music fans by buying and reselling concert tickets worth £6.5m. The Norfolk-based company used multiple identities to purchase large numbers of tickets, including those for high-profile concerts by artists such as Ed Sheeran and Little Mix, on primary sites such as Ticketmaster, before selling them on secondary ticketing platforms such as Viagogo. Two other individuals connected with the firm, Maria Chenery-Woods, 54, and Paul Douglas, 56, both admitted fraudulent trading.
Chenery and Woods were found guilty of three counts of fraudulent trading, with the prosecutor opening his case by saying: “The two defendants were ticket touts.” The prosecutor referred to practices such as “doing a fraudie”, which involved sending customers ripped envelopes to infer the tickets had been lost in transit, or “using fraud juice”, which either involved the use of Tipp-Ex correcting fluid or more sophisticated digital methods to amend tickets. He added that on secondary ticket platforms alone, the firm had global sales in excess of £6.5m, buying 47,000 tickets during the period from June 2015 to December 2017, using 127 names and 187 different email addresses.
He argued that the company had exploited fans to milk them for profits, some of whom were denied entry to venues or left with poorer tickets than they had paid for. In one message to Chenery-Woods, Douglas said that the point of the business was to “simply rinse consumers for as much profit as they are willing to pay”. Jurors heard that those at TQ Tickets communicated via Skype messages. Sentencing for all four will be held at a later date.
The case highlights on-going concerns about ticket touting, particularly given the increase in online platforms and the impact of Covid-19 on live entertainment. In November, it was reported that one in four football fans had fallen victim to ticket scams when trying to buy tickets online, often spending large sums through unofficial channels
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