Yeah it's always disappointing when you read of cases like these where people have made a small fortune, spend a bit of time inside and still have that wealth to come out to. I'd have hoped the courts would have taken back that money.
They might still do? IIRC asset recovery stuff can be separate to the actual case itself. Though I guess in this case the purchasers of the tickets weren't defrauded directly - they agreed to pay a price and did indeed receive a ticket for that price. The people defrauded are the venues/artists by the false/additional identities used in purchasing the tickets - this didn't directly cause a financial loss for them though. Obviously it has a side effect of increasing demand/inflating prices for anyone buying in a secondary market.
Exactly this. They seemed to have developed some software that could pick up these tickets much quicker than the general public. If they were only selling them for £10 over the face value, despite selling hundreds of thousands of tickets, they'd have probably skated under the radar and not been caught.
Its the mass buying/false identities that got them I think - obvs the ridiculous 7k ticket brought them the attention but if they weren't using additional identities then they're not necessarily breaking the law AFAIK? I'd presume they'd need a bigger margin to make it viable as they will periodically get some tickets canceled etc..
I've never truly understood the business model of ticket touts. I've been into events literally as the main event is starting, and you've got touts outside still trying to sell tickets at some stupid price over face value. Surely when you're at the point where the main event is started, you'd be better of shifting your remaining tickets at whatever you can get them for. Otherwise they become just a worthless bit of paper and devalue your previously sold tickets.
Well I guess it is an inefficient market and they're not necessarily the brightest of people - though anyone doing anything too stupid will perhaps go out of business and the rest ought to sort of evolve/optimise over time.
Firstly they likely maintain quite a large spread in the market they create which will account for having excess inventory at the end of the night. Secondly I would suspect they perhaps don't get too many people just walking past the venue who would suddenly drop what they're otherwise planning to do in order to attend the event. People turning up late without a ticket have already committed to trying to find a ticket and likely know full well they'd need to pay a premium.
Alternative is they'd be pitching to people who are already planning to do something else that evening or are just heading home etc..
That phrase doesn't usually entail cutting off or reducing the existing supply to inflate worth.
The poster was just making a reference to this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supply_and_demand
The poster said they found a demand (for the tickets) and they've supplied it - and that is what they've done - there is a demand for them (that often exceeds the original supply) and they do indeed supply that demand. That there is some original supply for them doesn't negate that - the primary market has a fixed price/doesn't adjust in response to demand but operates on a queue system... getting ahead in the queue has value and they have the means to do this so they can exploit the additional demand for these tickets by selling them on at a profit.
That isn't a comment on the morals of what they're doing etc...