How shameless tout gangs like £6.5m ‘Ticket Queen’ cashed in on the DEAD to fund champagne lunches and exotic holidays

COUNTRY pads, boozy trips to luxury department stores and holidays in the sun – such is life of a ticket tout and their industrial-scale operations ripping off honest fans up and down the country.

Unscrupulous resellers would stop at nothing to squeeze out the extra pennies, and now The Sun can reveal that greedy scalpers have even been using the identities of DEAD people to mass-buy tickets.

Experts say touts have been trawling through obituaries and social media platforms like Facebook to find names of the deceased, while also using names of kids as young as 10.

Professional touts often use multiple identities or credit cards to make it look like individuals are purchasing tickets.

The disturbing revelation comes as the Government this week announced plans to ban the reselling of tickets to live events for a profit, in a major blow to unscrupulous touts. 

Last week, dozens of stars including Dua Lipa, Sam Fender and Coldplay urged more to be done to protect genuine fans from those trying to bleed their pockets dry.

STAG HUNT

Dark side of Europe’s stag do capital where Brit lads pile into ‘lap dance limos’

WIVES TALE

Collecting wives like cars & a $6bn city… controversial life of 00s icon Akon

Mike Andrews, national coordinator of National Trading Standards eCrime division, said: “Ticket touting is not a victimless crime.

“We are hearing anecdotally that the identities of the dead are being used by touts which is just despicable.

“Sadly, it’s all too difficult to do in the same way scammers look for obituaries, social media posts about people dying and use their details.”

The warning comes after a woman dubbed the ‘Ticket Queen’ was jailed for four years earlier this year for using over 120 identities and 187 different email addresses to buy tickets from sites like Ticketmaster.

They included a 10-year-old boy, entirely fake names and a dead uncle.

In May a court heard how Maria Chenery-Woods bought tickets on an ‘industrial’ scale after setting up Norfolk-based TQ Tickets Ltd.

She flogged them on secondary websites such as Viagogo for inflated prices.

The mum-of-three led a luxury lifestyle of exotic holidays and champagne trips to Harvey Nichols after the ‘business’ sold £6.5million worth of gig passes to big name concerts like Ed Sheeran, Elton John, Taylor Swift, Little Mix and Tom Jones.

They ran the business from her and her partner’s spacious country pad in Norfolk, set in idyllic fields and even home to its own swimming pool.

Profit-crazed

Cherney-Woods, 54, and husband Mark Woods, 60, ran the racket with her sister Lynda Chenery, 51, and her partner Paul Douglas, 56.

She was jailed for four years, while Douglas was jailed for two years and five months. Woods and Chenery were handed suspended sentences.

They made massive profits, and had sales in excess of £6.5million between June 2015 to December 2017.

The jury saw a message sent from Douglas to Chenery-Woods that said the purpose of TQ Tickets was to “simply rinse consumers for as much profit as they are willing to pay”. 

Two tickets for an Anthony Joshua versus Wladimir Klitschko fight each sold for £418 while the family sold tickets to see the Harry Potter play in London’s West End for £725 – a mark up of more than 500 per cent.

Trading standards officers found a file packed with credit cards – including ones under the name of a dead uncle.

Mike Andrews said: “There was almost no moral compass in what they were doing. 

It was almost like a game to them about how much money they could pocket for themselves

Mike Andrews

“They just thought it was a free-for-all in that some of the terms they used, when chatting among themselves, were about how they’d just rinsed another customer. It was almost like a game to them about how much money they could pocket for themselves.

“The fact they used the name of a dead uncle to acquire credit cards to buy tickets is just awful.

“People think there’s no real crime in reselling tickets but that’s not true.

“We get families in tears who have been turned away from concerts, despite spending hundreds of pounds, because artists have rightly cancelled resold tickets.”

Rip-off riches

The use of multiple credit cards to get around limits on the number of tickets one person can buy is commonplace among savvy touts.

Another tout, Andrew Newman, built up a multi-million pound business and was even reported to Trading Standards for flouting a ban on reselling.

The shameless tout showed off his wealth with his purchase of a £1million five-bedroom, three-garage house in West Lothian, Scotland in October 2018.

Two other touts, Peter Hunter, 53, and David Smith, 68, were sentenced to prison in 2020 after they were found guilty of fraudulent trading and possessing and article for fraud.

The couple benefited from their crimes by a total of £8.8million between May 2010 and December 2017, and in 2022 they were ordered to pay back £6.2million within three months or face a further eight years behind bars.

Like other touts, they used other people’s names, addresses, and emails to evade detection systems, and bots to buy tickets in bulk.

Last year, Coldplay fans were devastated when gigs sold out in under 40 minutes before passes appeared on resale websites moments later for as much as £2,916.

But it was the big Oasis comeback that really put the dodgy resale market back in the limelight as gold-dust tickets were snapped up by touts.

The band urged people to boycott Viagogo after scammers tried to flog them for “the price of a house”.

More than 10,000 people have fallen victim to touts in the past 13 months at a staggering cost of £9.7 million, according to Action Fraud statistics.

However, the Government’s plans to ban them have been welcomed both fans and artists alike with hopes the move can stamp out the practice once and for all.

Very simply, the proposed new laws will make it illegal to resell tickets for live events for above their original cost.

Service charges and extra fees will also be capped.

SHOP DROP

Major high street chain is shutting two shops this week after axing 77 locations

TOUGH LOVE

Truth behind Pierce Brosnan’s reunion with addict son & star’s brutal ultimatum

When the new rules will come into place is unclear, as they must first be voted on by Parliament.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer vowed: “We’ll make sure tickets are available at a price people can afford.”