Ed Sheeran ticket touts ordered to repay £6m

Two internet ticket touts who resold tickets for events by artists including Ed Sheeran have been ordered to repay more than £6m.

Peter Hunter, 53, and David Smith, 68, were convicted in 2020 of three counts of fraudulent trading and one of possessing articles for fraud.

The pair benefited from their crimes by almost £9m, Leeds Crown Court was told.

They have been given three months to repay £6,167,522.02 or face an extra eight years in prison.

In February 2020, Hunter was jailed for four years and Smith for two-and-a-half years.

They were the UK's first successful convictions against a company fraudulently reselling tickets on a large scale, National Trading Standards said.

Its lengthy investigation and a complex financial investigation conducted by the Yorkshire and Humber Regional Economic Crime Unit (RECU) had found the pair benefited from their crimes by £8,750,732.00.

Ruth Andrews, from National Trading Standards, said the "landmark" case showed buying large numbers of tickets and reselling them at inflated prices was "an unacceptable, illegal and fraudulent practice".

Ramona Senior, unit head at RECU, said it resulted in the public turning to a secondary market "forcing them to pay significantly inflated prices".

"Today's orders indicate that those making large profits from an illegal activity can expect the full weight of the law to be applied to them," she added.

Hunter and Smith, both from north London, had been prosecuted in February 2020 following an investigation by the National Trading Standards eCrime Team, which is hosted by North Yorkshire County Council and the City of York Council.

The pair ran BZZ Limited, between May 2010 and December 2017, which they used to buy and resell hundreds of tickets at inflated prices for high profile events and concerts by artists such as Ed Sheeran, Madness, McBusted and other mainstream acts.

At their trial, it emerged in one year alone they bought more than 750 tickets for Sheeran events.

They used at least 97 different names, 88 postal addresses and more than 290 email addresses to evade platform restrictions on multiple purchases.

An appeal against their conviction was rejected by the Court of Appeal in November 2021.