Ticketmaster to pay $10 million in fines after admitting to illegally accessing competitor's computers!

[r2d2]

Ticketmaster entered into a plea agreement with federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York and will pay $10 million in fines to resolve charges that it accessed the computer systems of a competitor without authorization.

"Ticketmaster employees repeatedly -- and illegally -- accessed a competitor's computers without authorization using stolen passwords to unlawfully collect business intelligence," Acting U.S. Attorney Seth DuCharme said Wednesday in a press release.

Ticketmaster is a subsidiary of LiveNation (LYV). In 2019, Democratic senators called for a federal antitrust investigation of LiveNation for what they called "nefarious practices" and "sky-high fees" levied on consumers.

The company will pay the fine to resolve a five-count criminal information filed Wednesday with counts including conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, computer intrusion of a protected computer, computer intrusion in furtherance of fraud, wire fraud conspiracy and wire fraud.  According to the deferred prosecution agreement unsealed Wednesday, a former Ticketmaster employee named Zeeshan Zaidi went 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 unnamed in the court filing.  Zaidi allegedly had access to usernames and passwords for the unnamed competitor, and used them without authorization to access that company's systems while working for Ticketmaster between 2013 and 2015. The deferred prosecution agreement states that the information obtained from accessing the systems was used, for among other things, to prepare "strategy presentations for senior Live Nation and Ticketmaster executives that benchmarked competitor products and services," including ones offered by the competitor company.

 

baagaa aadaaru..but doriki poyaaru....