Ed Sheeran has welcomed a guilty verdict in the case of ticket touts who ‘exploited’ fans of his music.
Two individuals, Lynda Chenery and Mark Woods, have been found guilty of dishonest behavior regarding their involvement in touting firm TQ Tickets Ltd, which resold tickets amounting to more than £6.5 million pounds in just two and a half years.
Maria Chenery-Woods – who is Woods’s wife and Chenery’s sister – and Chenery’s ex-husband Paul Douglas admitted to the offenses at an earlier hearing.
Tickets for major musicians such as Lady Gaga, Little Mix and Sheeran were targeted by the ‘dishonest’ company, which bought up large numbers of tickets and resold them at greatly inflated prices.
Leeds Crown Court heard TQ Tickets bought up large amounts of tickets using multiple identities, some fake, from sites such as Ticketmaster, and sold them on secondary ticketing platforms such as Viagogo.
Fans of different artists have issued complaints over the years at seeing tickets for shows appear on Viagogo for thousands of pounds, immediately after selling out on Ticketmaster, according to PA.
The Thinking Out Loud star’s team had undergone ‘extensive measures’ to try and prevent fans being ripped off by touts reselling tickets for his gigs at excessive prices, they said.
His promoter, Stuart Galbraith, has called the verdict ‘good news for live music fans, who are too often ripped off and exploited by greedy ticket touts.’
And Ed’s manager, Stuart Camp, said the ‘low point’ for the team was a teenage Cancer Trust gig Ed did where ‘tickets were listed on Viagogo for thousands of pounds, but with none of the money going to charity.’
He added: ‘Today’s prosecution will help protect music fans and sets an important precedent in the live entertainment industry that I hope will be celebrated by live music fans.’
Camp and Galbraith both spoke at the trial, with Camp noting Sheeran’s 2018 stadium tour was ‘when we really took a stand against online ticket touts.
During the trial, jurors heard that Maria Chener-Woods described herself as the ‘Ticket Queen,’ and was the driving force behind the company.
The company concealed their IP addresses using specialist software to buy up huge amounts of tickets and sold them on, in some cases at 500% more than the face value.
Prosecutor Jonathan Sandiford KC said the case was ‘about greed and dishonesty,’ saving the two defendants were ‘part of a dishonest scheme that, over a number of years, exploited the love and passion that many of us have for our favorite pop bands, our favorite artists – people like Ed Sheeran and so forth… to milk them for profits.’
The court heard that TQ Tickets listed tickets before they were even sourced, and that fans were sometimes refused entry at venues — or were sent ripped envelopes with no tickets inside, to infer the tickets had been lost in the post.
Between 2015 and 2017, the company made sales exceeding £6,500,000, selling over 47,000 tickets using 127 names and 187 different email addresses.
Chenery, 51, and Woods, 59, both of Dickleburgh, near Diss, Norfolk, were convicted of three counts of fraudulent trading.
Chenery-Woods, 54, also of Dickleburgh, and Douglas, 56, of Pulham Market, Norfolk, admitted to the same offenses.
A message sent from Douglas to Chenery-Woods stated that the company would ‘simply exploit consumers for as much profit as they are willing to pay’.
Woods told the court he thought there was ‘nothing suspicious’ about his wife’s business but mentioned that she ‘became completely obsessed. It took priority over me, the family, and it caused conflict.’
Chenery, who handled the book-keeping for her sister’s company, said she did not believe TQ Tickets was engaged in fraud.
