Entertainment
Thousands of tickets to Taylor Swift and other events illegally resold by broker, FTC alleges
A Maryland ticket broker is accused of illegally purchasing and reselling hundreds of thousands of tickets for profit, including thousands to Taylor Swift’s highly sought Eras Tour.
The Federal Trade Commission is suing Key Investment Group, saying the company made millions of dollars in profit from reselling the tickets at inflated prices.
The lawsuit, filed Monday, Aug. 18, in U.S. District Court in Maryland, accuses the company and its affiliates of bypassing Ticketmaster’s security measures designed to block resellers from violating ticket-purchase limits.
Key Investment Group also did business under the names Epic Seats, TotalTickets.com LLC and Totally Tix LLC, according to the complaint.
The FTC alleges that, in a one year period, the group purchased at least 379,776 tickets from Ticketmaster at a cost of nearly $57 million. The company then allegedly resold those tickets on secondary marketplaces for about $64 million.
In a statement, Key Investment Group said it will “vigorously defend itself against this clear example of regulatory overreach.” It claims the FTC “misleadingly characterizes KIG’s use of standard internet browsers,” and said the government’s case “threatens to dismantle the secondary ticket market for live events.”
Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour tickets
Between March and August of 2023, Key Investment Group allegedly purchased 10 or more tickets to 38 Taylor Swift concerts, totaling 2,280 tickets, according to the complaint. The FTC says the company made more than $1.2 million in profit reselling those tickets.
For just one Taylor Swift show, the defendants allegedly used 49 different accounts to buy 273 tickets. The Eras Tour had a six-ticket purchase limit per customer, per event.
Among other events the FTC alleges were targeted was a 2023 Bruce Springsteen concert in New Jersey. Despite a four-ticket limit, the defendants allegedly purchased and resold more than 1,500 tickets.
How the alleged scheme worked
According to the FTC, the group used thousands of Ticketmaster accounts, both fictitious and third-party accounts it had purchased, to bypass security measures and purchase the tickets.
The company is also accused of using thousands of credit card numbers, including virtual card numbers, spoofing IP addresses to hide the identity of the ticket purchaser, and using SIM technology to collect the incoming verification codes.
In doing so, the FTC said the brokers violated the FTC Act and the Better Online Ticket Sales Act, which prohibits people from “circumventing a security measure, access control system, or other technological control or measure on an internet website or online service that is used by the ticket issuer to enforce posted event ticket limits or to maintain the integrity of posted online ticket purchasing order rules.”
Meta-owned WhatsApp is working on a new feature that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to summarise unread messages, so users don’t have to scroll through endless group chats and one-on-one conversations.
The Meta-owned messaging and video calling platform said that it announced a feature that lets users summarise multiple unread chats.
This feature will allow users to catch up on multiple conversations more efficiently without opening them separately, it added.
According to WABetaInfo, chats will be summarised by the artificial intelligence. It emphasised that the process is secure, and messages will remain private through private processing. This means that Meta can not access the messages during the process.
Once development is complete, the feature will be rolled out to select beta testers.
America’s aviation has been hit by catastrophic conditions on Tuesday, April 21, as three simultaneous crises hit the nation.
The primary reasons for the collapse include TSA staffing collapse, Iran-war fuel shock, and weather restrictions.
As per live FlightAware data, total delays worldwide reached 8,845 on Tuesday, with 675 delays occurring within, into, or out of the United States.
The total number of cancellations worldwide was 421, of which 28 occurred in or affected flights departing from US airports.
San Francisco International Airport became the epicenter of the disaster, with 475 delays and 69 cancellations following the FAA’s issuance of weather-related flight restrictions. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta, Boston Logan, and JFK International were the next most affected airports.
Full list of airlines with cancellations and delays
Major affected carriers include:
- SkyWest (7 cancellations, 68 delays)
- United Airlines (7 cancellations, 33 delays)
- Southwest (2 cancellations, 71 delays)
- Delta Airlines (1 cancellation, 51 delays)
- American Airlines
International carriers operating US routes suffered heavily, including:
- Japan Airlines (65 cancellations, 257 delays)
- Air China (24 cancellations, 174 delays)
- China Eastern (19 cancellations, 329 delays)
- Emirates (2 cancellations, 25 delays)
- Air Canada (7 cancellations, 21 delays)
Reroutes and fuel-driven cuts
Apart from delays and cancellations, airlines have been actively cutting down their schedules.
United Airlines has reduced 5% of its schedule over six months. Air Canada plans to discontinue its JFK services for six months, starting June 1 and ending October 25. Delta Airlines lost an additional $400 million on fuel costs in March alone.
There are just 60 days left until the start of the FIFA World Cup, and the TSA training cycle takes four to six months.
Jennifer Lopez and Will Smith are once again being linked together online, with many people wondering if something is going on between them.
The rumours have picked up quickly but there is no real proof that the two are dating.
The viral buzz started after old videos and past gossip started circulating again on social media.
As these clips made their way back into the spotlight, some fans started connecting dots and assuming that there might be a hidden story behind it.
But so far, nothing new has actually come out to support those claims.
A lot of this opinion seems to be coming from older speculations that have been around for years, which often involving Jada Pinkett Smith and Sean Combs.
These stories, however, were never confirmed yet they keep returning every now and then.
Right now, Lopez is said to be focusing on her life and work after her high-profile split from Ben Affleck.
At the same time, Smith still shares a public bond with Jada, even though they have spoken about living separately. Moreover, they do have a past connection, as they once talked about working together on a film that never happened.
For now, it looks like this is more about old rumours coming back again rather than anything new actually happening.
WhatsApp to let users generate private summaries of unread chats
US stocks today: Wall Street inches higher as markets eye ceasefire deadline; Dow jumps 300 points, S&P 500 remains flat – The Times of India
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