Two Jamaica men, one from Queens and the other from the island nation, were arrested last Thursday and charged for their role in the cybercrime theft of more than 900 concert tickets, the majority of which were for Taylor Swift’s record-shattering Eras Tour.
The ticket URLs were allegedly stolen by two individuals working at a third-party contractor for StubHub in Kingston, Jamaica. The stolen URLs were then emailed to two co-conspirators in Jamaica, Queens, who downloaded the tickets and resold them on StubHub for personal profit, raking in more than $600,000 over the course of one year, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz announced on Monday.
Shamara P. Simmons, 31, of 224th Street in Jamaica, Queens, and Tyrone Rose, 20, of Kingston, Jamaica, were arraigned in Queens Criminal Court on Thursday on a criminal complaint charging them with grand larceny, computer tampering, and conspiracy.
“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. “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.”
According to the investigation and charges, between June 2022 and July 2023, approximately 350 StubHub orders, resulting in approximately 993 tickets, were intercepted by two individuals working for a third-party contractor in Kingston, Jamaica, called Sutherland. The Sutherland employees, defendant Tyrone Rose, and an unapprehended accomplice, allegedly used their access to StubHub’s computer system to find a backdoor into a secure area of the network where already sold tickets were given a URL and queued to be emailed to the purchaser to download.
Rose and his co-conspirator re-directed the URLs to the emails of co-conspirators Shamara Simmons in Queens and a now-deceased accomplice who lived in Queens.
The co-conspirators loaded the tickets from the re-routed URL, then posted the tickets to StubHub and resold them for profit. The overall illicit proceeds from this scheme are valued at $635,000. Most of the stolen tickets were for high-value and high-profile events such as Swift’s stadium tour, Adele concerts, Ed Sheeran concerts, NBA games, and the U.S. Open Tennis Championships at Flushing Meadows Corona Park.
“This takedown highlights the vigilance of my office’s Cybercrime and Cryptocurrency Unit as well as the importance of working with our industry partners to combat fraudulent activities and ensure the protection of consumers,” Katz said.
Queens Criminal Court Judge Anthony Battisti ordered Simmons and Rose to return to court on March 7. They each face a potential maximum sentence of three to 15 years in prison if convicted on the top count.
“I thank StubHub for alerting us to this important case and encourage any Queens resident who may have been a victim of a cybercrime to contact our Cyber Crimes team at 718-286-6673 or CyberCrimes@queensda.org,” Katz said, adding that the investigation remains ongoing to determine the extent of the operation, including other potential co-conspirators.
