Six ticket resellers have been charged with money laundering and breaches of consumer law by the National Trading Standards in a landmark prosecution that could heavily impact touts.
The defendants allegedly made more than £10m in total by harvesting tickets in bulk and selling them on through resale websites.
The defendants’ company allegedly spent £2.3m on tickets between June 2015 and December 2017 and sold them on for £4.5m, notching a paper profit of £2.2m.
The group was arrested in 2017 during the NTS investigation into ticketing resale and touting and at a hearing at York magistrates court, the defendants indicated they would enter a not guilty plea, according to the Guardian newspaper.
In addition, prosecutors have claimed that two other men in London put tickets up for resale more than 21,000 times between June 2015 and February 2018.
The pair’s company allegedly purchased more than £4m worth of tickets and resold them on for more than £10.8m.
The two men, who were arrested last year, have also said in court that they will not plead guilty.
The court in York heard that the six accused would be tried alongside a third group of defendants facing the same charges, who were arrested last year.
The resale websites the defendants were alleged to have used were not mentioned, though the judge reportedly said NTS’s case “seems to be as much about Viagogo (a ticket resale website) as anything else”.
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