WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Federal Trade Commission has filed a lawsuit against a Maryland-based ticket broker operation accused of using illegal tactics to bypass ticket purchasing limits for high-demand events, including Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, and reselling tickets at inflated prices, generating millions in profit.
According to the FTC’s complaint, the defendants — Key Investment Group, its affiliated companies operating under names like Epic Seats, TotalTickets.com LLC, and Totally Tix LLC, as well as executives Yair D. Rozmaryn, Elan N. Rozmaryn, and Taylor Kurth — allegedly circumvented Ticketmaster’s safeguards designed to prevent bulk ticket purchases by resellers.
The FTC claims the operation used thousands of Ticketmaster accounts, including fake and third-party profiles, along with virtual and traditional credit card numbers to evade detection. Investigators also allege the defendants masked their identities using proxy and spoofed IP addresses and relied on SIM boxes to receive account verification codes tied to hundreds of fictitious phone numbers.
These tactics, the complaint states, enabled the defendants to buy at least 379,776 tickets over a 14-month period at a cost of nearly $57 million. A portion of these tickets was then resold on secondary marketplaces for approximately $64 million, often at substantial markups.
For one Taylor Swift Eras Tour concert, the FTC alleges the defendants used 49 accounts to secure 273 tickets, far exceeding Ticketmaster’s six-ticket limit per event.
The lawsuit accuses the defendants of violating both the Federal Trade Commission Act and the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, which prohibits circumventing security measures intended to enforce ticket purchase limits or preserve fair access for consumers.
The complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, Northern Division, following a unanimous 3-0 vote by FTC commissioners authorizing the action.
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