Former Ticketmaster boss convicted of hacking rival company CrowdSurge

A former Ticketmaster boss who illegally gained access to a rival company's computer servers to steal information has been convicted.

Between 2013 and 2015, Briton Stephen Mead stole confidential data from CrowdSurge, a smaller company he had previously worked for. His actions directly contributed to the collapse of the company, the New York Department of Justice said.

Mead pleaded guilty in June to conspiracy to break into CrowdSurge's computers. He has now been fined $67,970 (about £52,000) and placed on probation for one year.

In court documents in the US state, Ticketmaster management had asked Mead to disclose “competitive information” about the company.

Ticketmaster – which describes itself as the world's largest entertainment ticketing platform – did not respond to the BBC's request for comment.

Another former Ticketmaster executive, Zeeshan Zaidi, also pleaded guilty to fraud charges of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion and wire fraud in 2019. His sentencing is pending.

Mead was ordered to repay an amount he received upon leaving CrowdSurge, as well as the salary increase he subsequently received at Ticketmaster.

A Foreign Office spokesman told the BBC: “We are providing consular assistance to a British national in the US and are in contact with local authorities.”

CrowdSurge – a website that allowed artists to sell pre-sale tickets to fans – was a rival ticketing company to Ticketmaster, with headquarters in London and a US office in New York. According to US court documents, the company was worth an estimated more than $100 million.

As of 2010, Mead served as CrowdSurge's senior vice president of global operations and general manager of North America.

The BBC has seen court documents which show that Mead signed a “separation agreement” when he left CrowdSurge in July 2012. It stated that he was not allowed to share or retain any confidential information – including customer lists and marketing strategies – with third parties.

According to the court filing, the agreement also stipulated that Mead could not work for another ticketing company for a year. As part of the agreement, CrowdSurge paid Mead approximately $52,970.

But he repeatedly violated the separation agreement, court documents say.

In the summer of 2013, Mead was employed by Ticketmaster's parent company, Live Nation, in a division called TicketWeb.

CrowdSurge's server logs show that between August 2013 and December 2015, there were at least 25 instances of corporate data being accessed from computers with IP addresses registered to Ticketmaster and affiliated companies in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles, prosecutors said.

According to the indictment, Mead unauthorizedly shared CrowdSurge spreadsheets containing financial information and passwords and, at the request of Ticketmaster executives, gained access to competitive information about the company's customers and technologies.

He also provided other Ticketmaster employees with information that allowed them to access password-protected CrowdSurge information. He advised them to “take as many screenshots of the system as possible” and talked about “Cut[ting] “CrowdSurge brought to its knees,” court documents say.

They also state that, at Zaidi's request, Mead once gave a presentation to at least 14 executives and employees of Live Nation and Ticketmaster, during which he logged into their website using a CrowdSurge username and password without authorization. During the presentation – which was projected onto a large screen in a conference room – Mead demonstrated one of CrowdSurge's custom products called Artists' Toolbox – a web-based data analytics package for music artists.

During his employment, Mead also shared real-time ticket sales data and the identities of the artists CrowdSurge worked with.

The Justice Department says Ticketmaster used the information to plan competitive responses to win pre-sale ticket orders and to compare products and offers. It added that Mead's actions resulted in financial losses for CrowdSurge that were “particularly significant in a highly competitive business environment.”

It is said that Mead was promoted to Director of Customer Service in Ticketmaster's Artist Services department in early 2015, reporting directly to Zaidi and also received a raise.

According to court documents, Mead did not participate in the crime to personally benefit from the scheme, other than the advantage he received by enhancing his reputation and position at Ticketmaster.

CrowdSurge discovered the Mead hack after a former Ticketmaster executive started working at the company in 2015 and asked the company to change access to its systems.

Mead's employment was terminated by Live Nation and Ticketmaster in October 2017.

According to court documents, Mead left the US and returned to the UK in 2019. He was arrested in Italy and extradited to the US earlier this year.

In 2015, CrowdSurge's parent company, Complete Entertainment Resources, filed a civil lawsuit against Ticketmaster, claiming that the company dominated the market and had “attempted in various ways to destroy competition in the market for advance ticket sales services for artists.”

This included preventing numerous artists from working with SongKick – a company with which CrowdSurge merged in June 2015 – and CrowdSurge using its market power to “force” them to work with Ticketmaster instead.

Ticketmaster and SongKick settled their legal dispute in 2018, resulting in Ticketmaster paying SongKick's owners $110 million and purchasing SongKick's ticketing technology for an undisclosed amount.

Ticketmaster entered into a dismissal agreement with the New York Department of Justice after pleading guilty to five counts of fraud in 2020. In this process, a company reaches an agreement with a prosecutor whereby the company is charged with a crime but the case is automatically dismissed.

The ticket giant was fined $10 million and agreed to “modify or maintain its existing compliance program as necessary and appropriate.”

The Department of Justice confirmed that Ticketmaster met the terms of the deferred prosecution in July 2024.