Former Ticketmaster president convicted for hacking rival company CrowdSurge

The former president of Ticketmaster has been convicted of illegally accessing a rival company’s computer server and stealing information.

British national Stephen Mead stole sensitive data from CrowdSurge, a small business where he previously worked, between 2013 and 2015. The New York Department of Justice said his actions directly contributed to the company’s collapse.

Meade pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit computer intrusion against Crowdsurge in June. He has now been ordered to pay $67,970 (around £52,000) in forfeiture funds and is on one year’s probation.

According to documents filed in a U.S. state court, Ticketmaster executives had asked Mead to share “competitive information” about the company.

Ticketmaster, which describes itself as the world’s largest entertainment ticketing platform, did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.

Zeeshan Zaidi, a former Ticketmaster executive, also pleaded guilty to fraud charges for conspiring to commit computer intrusion and wire fraud in 2019. A sentence has yet to be imposed.

Mead was ordered to pay back the money he received when he left Crowdsurge, as well as the pay increases he subsequently received at Ticketmaster.

A Foreign Office spokesman told the BBC: “We are providing consular support to a British man in the US and are in contact with local authorities.”

Crowdsurge, a website where artists could sell tickets in advance to their fans, was a Ticketmaster rival based in London with a US branch in New York. The company was estimated to be valued at more than $100 million, according to US court documents.

Since 2010, Mead served as CrowdSurge’s Senior Vice President of Global Operations and General Manager of North America.

The BBC has seen court documents which show that when Mead left Crowdsurge in July 2012 he signed a “separation agreement” which stated he must not share or retain any confidential information, including customer lists or marketing strategies, with third parties.

The agreement also stipulated that Meade could not work for any other ticket sales company for one year, and Crowdsurge paid Meade approximately $52,970 as part of the arrangement, according to court documents.

But court documents say he repeatedly violated the separation agreement.

By the summer of 2013, Meade had been hired by a division of Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation, called TicketWeb.

According to prosecutors, CrowdSurge’s computer server logs showed at least 25 instances between August 2013 and December 2015 when the company’s data was accessed from computers with IP addresses registered to Ticketmaster and affiliates in New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Prosecutors said Mead shared CrowdSurge spreadsheets containing financial information and passwords without authorization and accessed competitive information about the company’s customers and technology at the request of Ticketmaster executives.

He also provided other Ticketmaster employees with information that gave them access to password-protected Crowdsurge information, he advised them to “take extensive screenshots of the system” and discussed “shutting down Crowdsurge completely,” court documents show.

And on one occasion, at Mr. Zaidi’s request, Mr. Mead gave a presentation to at least 14 executives and employees of Live Nation and Ticketmaster during which he used his Crowdsurge username and password to log into the companies’ websites without their permission, the suit says. During the presentation, projected on a large screen in the conference room, Mr. Mead demonstrated one of Crowdsurge’s custom products, Artist Toolbox, a Web-based data analytics package for music artists.

During his tenure, Mead also shared real-time ticket sales data and the identities of performers with whom Crowdsurge was working.

The Justice Department said Ticketmaster used the information to engineer competitive strategies to obtain advance ticket sales business and compare products and services. It added that Meade’s conduct led to financial losses for Crowdsurge and was “particularly significant in a competitive business environment.”

Mead was then promoted to director of customer service for Ticketmaster’s artist services division in early 2015, reporting directly to Zaidi, and was also given a raise in salary, according to the report.

According to court documents, Meade did not engage in criminal conduct to personally benefit from the scheme other than through the benefits he gained from his enhanced position or status within Ticketmaster.

CrowdSurge discovered Meade’s hack after a former Ticketmaster executive started working at the company in 2015 and warned him to change how he accessed the system.

Meade was fired by Live Nation and Ticketmaster around October 2017.

According to court documents, Meade left the United States in 2019 and returned to the UK. He was arrested in Italy earlier this year and extradited to the US.

In 2015, Crowdsurge’s parent company, Complete Entertainment Resources, filed a civil lawsuit against Ticketmaster, alleging that the company had monopolized the market and “attempted in various ways to destroy competition in the market for artist advance ticket sales services.”

This included “blocking” numerous artists from partnering with SongKick (the company that CrowdSurge merged with in June 2015) and using its market power to “force” artists to partner with Ticketmaster.

Ticketmaster and Songkick settled their legal battle in 2018, with Ticketmaster paying Songkick’s owners $110 million and acquiring Songkick’s ticket sales technology for an undisclosed amount.

Ticketmaster entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the New York Department of Justice after pleading guilty to five fraud charges in 2020. In this process, a company reaches an agreement with prosecutors and is automatically stayed from criminal charges.

The ticket sales giant was fined $10 million and agreed to “modify or maintain its existing compliance programs, where necessary and appropriate.”

The Department of Justice confirmed that Ticketmaster completed the terms of its deferred prosecution in July 2024.