Stephen Mead, a British national, stole confidential information from CrowdSurge, a smaller company he had previously worked for, between 2013 and 2015. His activities had a direct impact on the company’s demise, according to the New York Department of Justice.
In June, Mead entered a guilty plea to the charge of conspiring to hack CrowdSurge’s computer system. He has now been sentenced to a year of supervised release and forced to pay a forfeiture of $67,970 (about £52,000).
documents submitted in court in the US state Executives at Ticketmaster had requested that Mead divulge “competitive intelligence” about the business.
The news asked Ticketmaster to comment, and the company, which bills itself as the largest entertainment ticketing platform globally, did not.
In 2019, Zeeshan Zaidi, a former executive of Ticketmaster, entered a guilty plea to fraud charges pertaining to conspiracy to commit computer intrusions and wire fraud. He is not yet facing a sentence.
Mead was ordered to reimburse Ticketmaster for the wage increase he received after leaving CrowdSurge, in addition to the amount he was given back when he left the company.
“We are providing consular assistance to a British man in the US and are in contact with the local authorities,” a Foreign Office official told the news.
With its headquarters in London and a US office in New York, CrowdSurge was a rival ticketing company to Ticketmaster. It was a website where artists could offer pre-sale tickets to fans. According to US court records, the business was estimated to be worth more than it.
