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BROOKLYN, N.Y. (Legal Newsline) – The federal government is suing Just In Time Tickets, claiming the company are using bots to scoop up tens of thousands of tickets for resale.
These actions violate the Better Online Ticket Sales Act, the Federal Trade Commission alleges in a Jan. 14 lawsuit filed in New York federal court. This has been going on for the last four years, the FTC claims, and Just In Time Tickets has exceeded posted ticket limits to “many popular events.”
“Defendants have used hundreds of thousands of fictitious Ticketmaster accounts, multiple credit cards (including some in the names of fictitious individuals), and proxy or spoofed IP addresses to bypass, trick, or otherwise avoid security measures… that would have otherwise blocked or prevented them from obtaining so many tickets,” the lawsuit says.
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The companies and their bosses, Evan Kohanian, Simon Ebrani, and Steven Brani, have been ordered to pay £2.7m between them by the FTC (Federal Trade Commission), lowered from $31m (£22m) due to their inability to pay the fines.
A summary of the court case reads: “The three ticket brokers will be subject to a judgment of more than $31 million in civil penalties for violating the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, under a proposed settlement reached with the FTC. Due to their inability to pay, the judgment will be partially suspended, requiring them to pay $3.7 million.
The FTC’s chairwoman Rebecca Kelly Slaughter added in a statement: “The Act’s bipartisan sponsors sought to crack down on the abuses that unscrupulous actors inflict on consumers whose typing fingers were no match for algorithms in attempting to secure tickets online.
Three New York-area ticket resellers have been fined by the FTC under the BOTS Act, as Engadget reports. It is the first case to be brought under the Obama-era anti-scalping legislation that was passed in 2016. Three companies Just in Time Tickets, Inc., Cartisim Corp., and Concert Specials, Inc. and their principals Evan Kohanian, Simon Ebrani, and Steven Brani are alleged to have used ticket bots to purchase tickets to flip on the resale market. They were handed a civil penalty judgment totaling $3.7 million.
“The three ticket brokers will be subject to a judgment of more than $31 million in civil penalties for violating the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, under a proposed settlement reached with the FTC,” reads the case summary. “Due to their inability to pay, the judgment will be partially suspended, requiring them to pay $3.7 million.”