# Cybercrime crew stole hundreds of Taylor Swift tickets: Prosecutors

A "cybercrime crew" stole nearly 1,000 concert tickets to the record-breaking Taylor Swift Eras Tour and other high-profile events on StubHub and then resold them for hundreds of thousands of dollars, New York prosecutors said.

The scheme involved people working in Kingston, Jamaica, for a third-party contractor partnered with StubHub, a ticket exchange and resale company, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz announced Monday. The contractors allegedly stole ticket URLs and then emailed them to two co-conspirators in New York City's Queens borough, according to Katz.

The co-conspirators downloaded the tickets and resold them on StubHub at inflated prices for personal profit, Katz added. The crew raked in more than $600,000 for about one year.

The majority of the tickets stolen were for Taylor Swift's Eras Tour – which became the highest-grossing tour of all time after amassing over $2.7 billion in ticket sales last year. But the crew also stole tickets from other high-value events, such as Adele and Ed Sheeran concerts, NBA games, and the U.S. Open Tennis Championships, according to Katz.

Authorities in New York arrested two people involved in the scheme last Thursday, Katz said. Tyrone Rose, 20, of Kingston, Jamaica, and Shamara Simmons, 31, of the Jamaica neighborhood of Queens, were charged with second-degree grand larceny, first-degree and fourth-degree computer tampering, and fourth-degree conspiracy.

Rose and Simmons are expected to return to court on Friday, according to Katz. They each face a maximum sentence of three to 15 years in prison if convicted of the top count.

"According to the charges, these defendants tried to use the popularity of Taylor Swift’s concert tour and other high-profile events to profit at the (expense) of others," Katz said in a statement. "They allegedly exploited a loophole through an offshore ticket vendor to steal tickets to the biggest concert tour of the last decade and then resold those seats for an extraordinary profit of more than $600,000."

Katz added that the investigation remains ongoing to "determine the extent of this operation, including other potential co-conspirators." The district attorney's office encouraged any Queens resident who may have been a victim of a cybercrime to contact the office.

Ticketmaster warns fans of scams. 

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Officials have released a report on the death of Gene Hackman and Betsy Arakawa's Australian Kelpie mix, Zinna, who was found in a crate near Arakawa.

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