‘It Ends With Us’ Isabela Ferrer accuses Justin Baldoni of bullying her amid Blake Lively legal battle

Key Takeaways:

• FTC alleges a trio bought 321,286 tickets to 3,261 events using bots and fake identities.
• The group spent $46.7 million and resold the seats for $52.4 million, clearing $5.7 million.
• Taylor Swift’s 2023 “Eras Tour” alone generated $1.2 million in profit for the scalpers.
• Internal Ticketmaster documents and emails surface in the complaint, though the company is not a defendant.
• The FTC is seeking civil penalties against defendants Taylor Kurth, Elan Rozmaryn and Yair Rozmaryn.

The Digital Rush for Seats
Federal Trade Commission lawyers say the ticket grab was both massive and meticulously automated. Between June 2022 and December 2023, according to the complaint, three brokers—Taylor Kurth, Elan Rozmaryn and Yair Rozmaryn—used software that masked IP addresses, along with repurposed credit cards and SIM cards, to pierce Ticketmaster’s safeguards. All told, the bots secured 321,286 tickets to 3,261 concerts, often in bundles of 15 or more, despite Ticketmaster’s per-customer limits.

How the Scheme Worked
Flyers distributed in cities such as Baltimore promised that anyone could “make money doing verified fan sign ups” in “3 easy steps,” offering $5 for each new Ticketmaster account and up to $20 when a Verified Fan presale code arrived. Those credentials, combined with the brokers’ automated tools, let the trio act faster than human buyers and vacuum up inventory moments after it went on sale.

Star Tours, Sky-High Profits
The biggest payday came from Taylor Swift’s record-breaking “Eras Tour.” The FTC estimates the defendants cleared $1.2 million on Swift tickets alone, including one March 2023 Las Vegas show where they used 49 accounts to snag 273 seats—well above the six-ticket cap—then resold them for $120,000. Bruce Springsteen’s tour and a May 2024 Bad Bunny show in Miami were also hit.

Fans felt the squeeze, and artists noticed. “It’s really difficult for me to trust an outside entity with these relationships and loyalties, and excruciating for me to just watch mistakes happen with no recourse,” Swift wrote on Instagram in 2022 after Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan presale crashed. Springsteen later observed that “ticket buying has gotten very confusing, not just for the fans, but for the artists also.”

Federal Crackdown
In March, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing regulators to curb abusive ticket-resale practices. Announcing Monday’s lawsuit, FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson said the order made clear “that unscrupulous middlemen who harm fans and jack up prices through anticompetitive methods will hear from us.”

Ticketmaster Under the Microscope
Ticketmaster is not accused of wrongdoing in this case, yet several of its internal records appear in the filing. A 2018 presentation slide warned of “serious negative economic impact if we move to 8 ticket limit across the board.” In an email cited by the FTC, a broker “owns up” to exceeding limits for a Bad Bunny show, only to have a Ticketmaster representative reply that as long as different accounts and cards were used, “it’s within the guidelines.”

Who’s on the Hook
The defendants face unspecified damages and civil penalties. Kurth had already signed a 2018 consent decree with Washington State pledging not to deploy software that bypasses security barriers—a promise the FTC now says he broke.

By the Numbers

Tickets Purchased | Events Affected | Purchase Cost | Resale Revenue | Profit
—|—|—|—|—
321,286 | 3,261 | $46.7 million | $52.4 million | $5.7 million

What Comes Next
Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation, remain under separate federal scrutiny for alleged anticompetitive behavior. Monday’s lawsuit does not resolve those questions, but it does signal that regulators intend to pursue the bot operators who help drive prices ever higher for fans eager to see their favorite artists live.