Press Release

Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz announced today that two individuals were arrested and arraigned for their role in the cybercrime theft of more than 900 concert tickets, the majority of which were for Taylor Swift’s 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.

District Attorney Katz said: “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. 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. 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. 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.”

Tyrone Rose, 20, of Kingston, Jamaica, and Shamara P. Simmons, 31, of 224^th Street in Jamaica, Queens, were arrested and arraigned Thursday on a criminal complaint charging them with grand larceny in the second degree, computer tampering in the first degree, conspiracy in the fourth degree and computer tampering in the fourth degree. Criminal Court Judge Anthony Battisti ordered the defendants to return to court on March 7. They each face a potential maximum sentence of three to 15 years in prison if convicted of the top count.

The investigation remains ongoing to determine the extent of this operation, including other potential co-conspirators.

DA Katz said that, according to the charges and investigation, 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 downloaded 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 tickets stolen were for high value and high-profile events such as the Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour, Adele concerts, Ed Sheeran concerts, NBA games and the US Open Tennis Championships.

The investigation was referred to the District Attorney’s office by StubHub and conducted by Senior Rackets Investigator Patrick Roach of the District Attorney’s Detective Bureau, under the supervision of Sergeant Linda DenDekker and under the overall supervision of Chief Investigator Robert LaPollo.

Assistant District Attorney Catherine Jahn, Supervisor in the District Attorney’s Major Economic Crimes Bureau, is prosecuting the case under the supervision of Jonathan Scharf, Deputy Chief and Cryptocurrency Investigations Coordinator, Catherine Kane, Senior Deputy Chief, Mary Lowenburg, Bureau Chief, and under the overall supervision of Executive Assistant District Attorney for Investigations Gerard Brave.