The US Federal Trade Commission has filed a major lawsuit against a Maryland-based ticket brokering operation, alleging the company used illegal tactics to circumvent ticket purchase limits and resell hundreds of thousands of tickets at inflated prices, including for Taylor Swift’s blockbuster Eras Tour.
The action (which you can read in full here) targets Key Investment Group LLC and its network of affiliated companies, along with three individual executives.
They allegedly violated the Better Online Ticket Sales Act (BOTS Act) through a sophisticated scheme that generated approximately USD $64 million in secondary market sales revenue.
According to the FTC complaint filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland, the defendants purchased at least 379,776 tickets from Ticketmaster between November 2022 and December 2023 at a cost of nearly $57 million, then resold a portion of them on secondary platforms for $64 million.
The operation particularly targeted high-demand concerts, with the complaint detailing extensive purchases for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and Bruce Springsteen shows.
FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson today emphasized the action’s connection to broader Trump administration priorities, stating: “President Trump made it clear in his March Executive Order that unscrupulous middlemen who harm fans and jack up prices through anticompetitive methods will hear from us.
“Today’s action puts brokers on notice that the Trump-Vance FTC will police operations that unlawfully circumvent ticket sellers’ purchase limits, ensuring that consumers have an opportunity to buy tickets at fair prices.”
“Today’s action puts brokers on notice that the Trump-Vance FTC will police operations that unlawfully circumvent ticket sellers’ purchase limits.”
Andrew N. Ferguson, FTC
For one single Taylor Swift concert on March 25, 2023, at Allegiant Stadium, defendants used 49 different accounts to purchase 273 tickets, dramatically exceeding The Eras Tour’s six-ticket purchase limit, then marked up and resold these tickets, netting $119,227 in revenue.
Across 38 Taylor Swift concerts between March and August 2023, the brokers purchased 2,280 tickets for a total of $744,970 and resold them for $1,961,981, generating over $1.2 million in profit, according to court documents.
The scheme wasn’t limited to Swift.
For a Bruce Springsteen show at MetLife Stadium on September 1, 2023, defendants used 277 different accounts to purchase 1,530 tickets, far exceeding Springsteen and the E Street Band’s four-ticket limit.
They then marked up and resold these tickets for a net profit of $20,901.
The FTC alleges that Key Investment Group, operating under names including Epic Seats, TotalTickets.com LLC, and Totally Tix LLC, employed an arsenal of technology to defeat Ticketmaster’s anti-scalping measures, including:
Thousands of fake accounts: The complaint reveals that by September 2018, Ticketmaster had identified over 3,100 active and fictitious accounts controlled by Key Investment Group, with the company ultimately creating or obtaining more than 13,000 accounts.
Virtual credit cards: Defendants used thousands of virtual and traditional credit card numbers to avoid detection by Ticketmaster’s fraud prevention systems.
IP masking: The brokers employed proxy services and spoofed IP addresses to hide their true locations and circumvent geographic purchase restrictions.
SIM farms: Perhaps most notably, the operation used “SIM banks” – devices housing dozens of SIM cards – to automatically receive and process the verification codes Ticketmaster sends to verify legitimate fan accounts.
The complaint details how the defendants actively recruited others to create fake accounts through physical flyers distributed in Baltimore, Maryland.
These flyers promised participants could “Make Money Doing Verified Fan Sign Ups” in “3 Easy Steps” – creating generic Gmail accounts, using them to make Ticketmaster accounts with fake information, and earning $5 for account creation plus $5-20 for each Verified Fan presale code received.
The operation continued even after increased scrutiny.
In February 2024, after learning of the FTC investigation, the company voluntarily disclosed to Ticketmaster that it had used 19 accounts to purchase 61 tickets for a single Bad Bunny concert
Taylor Swift appeared to publicly criticize Ticketmaster in 2022 after the platform was overwhelmed during the on-sale for her Eras tour – thanks to a mix of fans, resellers, and bots.
“There are a multitude of reasons why people had such a hard time trying to get tickets and I’m trying to figure out how this situation can be improved moving forward,” Swift posted to her Instagram story.
“I’m not going to make excuses for anyone because we asked them, multiple times, if they could handle this kind of demand and we were assured they could. It’s truly amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really pisses me off that a lot of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them.”
The FTC case represents one of the most significant enforcement actions under the BOTS Act since its passage in 2016. The law specifically prohibits circumventing security measures used by ticket sellers to enforce purchase limits and makes it illegal to sell tickets obtained through such violations.
The lawsuit names Key Investment Group CEO Yair D. Rozmaryn, Chief Financial Officer Elan N. Rozmaryn, and Chief Strategic Officer Taylor Kurth as individual defendants.
Notably, Taylor Kurth had previously entered a consent decree with Washington State in 2018 regarding similar practices involving software to circumvent Ticketmaster’s security measures.
The corporate defendants operated as an interconnected network of companies with shared ownership, officers, and revenue streams, according to the complaint.
This common enterprise structure allowed them to conduct ticket brokering operations across multiple business entities while pursuing what the FTC characterizes as a unified scheme.
Ongoing Consumer Harm
The FTC argues that the defendants’ practices directly harmed consumers who would otherwise have access to tickets at face value. By using technological advantages unavailable to regular fans, the brokers could purchase tickets “more rapidly and in a greater volume than a consumer who has not been circumventing security measures,” according to the complaint.
The agency is seeking permanent injunctions to prevent future violations and civil penalties for each violation of the BOTS Act.
The case highlights ongoing challenges in the live music industry around ticket accessibility and pricing, particularly for major artists like Taylor Swift whose tours generate unprecedented demand.
The defendants have not yet responded publicly to the allegations. The case will now proceed through federal court, where it could set important precedents for enforcement of anti-bot ticketing laws in the music industry.
Key Investment Group sued the FTC in July in an attempt to block its investigation, saying that its ticket purchases did not use automated software, or bots, and did not violate the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act.Music Business Worldwide
