“Ticketmaster employees have repeatedly – and illegally – accessed the computers of an unauthorized competitor using stolen passwords to illegally collect business information,” US prosecutor Seth DuCharme said in a press release on Wednesday.
The company will pay a fine to settle a five-count criminal charge filed on Wednesday with charges, including conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, computerized intrusion of a protected computer, computer intrusion in favor of fraud, conspiracy against bank fraud and bank fraud.
Under the deferred prosecution agreement postponed on Wednesday, a former Ticketmaster employee named Zeeshan Zaidi left to work for Live Nation in 2013 as a consultant and was hired full-time to work for Ticketmaster in 2014 after leaving a competing company. , which is not named in the lawsuit.
Zaidi allegedly had access to usernames and passwords for the unnamed competitor and used them without permission to access that company’s systems while working for Ticketmaster between 2013 and 2015. The deferred prosecution agreement provides that the information obtained from accessing the systems were used, among other things, to prepare “strategy presentations for Live Nation and Ticketmaster executives who compared competing products and services,” including those offered by the competing company.
A press release from federal prosecutors said Ticketmaster employees held a division-level summit during which stolen passwords were used to access the victim company’s computers “as if it were a proper business tactic.”
According to the postponed prosecution agreement, a Ticketmaster executive described the purpose as “stifling” the victim company and “stealing back” one of its customers.
Zaidi was fired from Ticketmaster in 2017 and pleaded guilty in federal court in Brooklyn in 2019 on a conspiracy charge for accessing protected computers without authorization and committing bank fraud, according to the deferred prosecution agreement. Zaidi’s conviction was postponed, according to court records. CNN has contacted lawyers for comment.
“When employees move from one company to another, it’s illegal for them to take ownership of information with them,” said William Sweeney, the FBI’s deputy director of the investigation. “Ticketmaster used stolen information to gain an advantage over its competition, then promoted employees who broke the law.”
In a separate court hearing Wednesday, Advocate General of Ticketmaster Michael Rowles, a subsidiary of LiveNation, entered into the deferred prosecution agreement and waived the company’s right to prosecute on behalf of Ticketmaster, with the authorization of the board, he said during the remote procedure on Wednesday. .