Wiseguy ticket scalpers used botnets to outwit Captchas

A gang of ticket touts have admitted that they hired networks of compromised PCs to defeat CAPTCHAs that would normally have thwarted their plan to automatically purchase tickets for high interest events.

The trio - who operated a firm called Wiseguy Tickets (now there's a name you can trust - Ed) snapped up tickets for gigs from the likes of Bruce Springsteen concerts as well as Broadway productions and baseball playoffs before selling them on to legitimate ticket brokers at a hefty markup. The tech-savvy crooks hired Bulgarian programmers – paid between $1,000 and $1,500 a month – to set up a network of PCs programmed to purchase tickets from the likes of Ticketmaster, MLB.com and LiveNation.

Using the technique, the scoundrels were able to complete ticket applications far faster than legitimate purchasers. For example they scored 440 tickets for a Springsteen gig in July 2008. The miscreants signed up to thousands of cut-out email address and registered hundreds of fake corporations to disguise their fraud.

The "Wiseguys" successfully ran the scam for seven years between 2002 and 2009 before they came unstuck last year. An indictment filed back in March in the US blames the men for "fraud, deceit and computer hacking to make more than $25 million by acquiring and reselling more than 1.5 million of the most coveted tickets to concerts, sporting events and live entertainment throughout the US".

LA residents Kenneth Lowson, 41, and Kristofer Kirsch, 37, both pleaded guilty to a variety of hacking and wire-fraud charges over the scam at a court appearance in New Jersey on Thursday, Bloomber (via The New York Times) reports. Joel Stevenson, 36, admitted lesser hacking charges over the same scam.

Sentencing is due to take place on 15 March next year. A fourth suspect in the case, chief financial officer Faisal Nadhi, remains at large. ®