Ticketmaster and the parent company, Live Nation, agreed to pay $ 10 million a competitor after admitting to hiring a former employee to join the rival company’s computer network.
According to a statement issued by the Justice Department on Wednesday, the five criminal charges facing Ticketmaster from a plot to infiltrate the computer system of rival ticket seller CrowdSurge in a self-described attempt to “cut [the company] the knees. “
“Ticketmaster employees have repeatedly – and illegally – accessed the computers of an unauthorized competitor using stolen passwords to illegally collect business information,” US attorney Seth DuCharme said in a statement. “Moreover, Ticketmaster employees boldly organized a ‘division’ summit at the entire division where the stolen passwords were used to access the victim company’s computers.”
The hacking plot was first reported in 2017, shortly after CrowdSurge filed an antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation. At some point prior to that filing, Live Nation allegedly recruited an employee named Stephen Mead, whom the company had poached from CrowdSurge in 2013, to contact his former employer, providing data analysis and inside secrets for executives. top in trying to fool the competitor.
Mead’s knowledge of his former employer’s passwords was so extensive that it allowed him to connect to the company’s backend during a 2014 Live Nation summit, where he allegedly offered directors a “product review” of CrowdSurge operations and conducted an internal demonstration of the smaller company. systems.
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In a statement to The Verge, a Ticketmaster spokesman said the company was happy with the terms of the deal and pointed out that both Mead and Zeeshan Zaidi – the former CEO of Ticketmaster’s artist services – had been fired following an investigation into the wrongdoing.
“Ticketmaster stopped both Zaidi and Mead in 2017 after their behavior came to light,” the spokesman said. “Their actions violated our corporate policies and were incompatible with our values. We are glad that this issue is now resolved. “