“Ticketmaster employees have repeatedly – and illegally – accessed a competitor’s computers without authorization using stolen passwords to illegally collect business information,” U.S. Attorney Seth DuCharme said in a press release on Wednesday.
The company will pay the fine for solving a five-count criminal information filed Wednesday with charges including conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, computer intrusion of a protected computer, computer intrusion to promote fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud.
Under the postponed prosecution agreement that was not sealed on Wednesday, a former Ticketmaster employee named Zeeshan Zaidi went to work at Live Nation as a consultant in 2013 and was hired full-time in 2014 to work at Ticketmaster after leaving a competitive company . court filing.
Zaidi allegedly had access to usernames and passwords for the anonymous competitor and used them without authorization to gain access to the company’s systems while working at Ticketmaster between 2013 and 2015. other things, to ‘prepare strategy presentations for senior Live Nation and Ticketmaster executives comparing competing products and services,’ including those offered by the competing company.
A press release by federal prosecutors said that Ticketmaster employees held a summit of the entire department during which the stolen passwords were used to gain access to the victim’s computers, as if it was an appropriate business tactic. ‘
According to the deferred prosecution agreement, a manager of Ticketmaster described that the purpose was to “suffocate” the victim business and “steal” one of its customers.
Zaidi was terminated at Ticketmaster in 2017 and pleaded guilty in 2019 in Brooklyn Federal Court to one charge of conspiracy to gain access to protected computers without authorization and wire fraud, according to the deferred prosecution agreement. According to court documents, Zaidi’s sentencing was delayed. CNN contacted its lawyers for comment.
“When employees walk out of one company and into another business, it’s illegal to take their own information with them,” said William Sweeney, assistant director of the FBI. The office is conducting the investigation. “Ticketmaster used stolen information to gain an advantage over its competition, and then promoted the employees who violated the law.”
In a remote court hearing Wednesday, Ticketmaster chief adviser Michael Rowles, a subsidiary of LiveNation, entered into the deferred prosecution agreement and waived the company’s right to hold prosecution proceedings on behalf of Ticketmaster, with the authority of the board, he said.