Peter Hunter and David Smith, two Nortech ticket touts, have been sentenced to prison time. In reality, they were perpetrating one of the largest fraud schemes in the UK, earning £8.8 million from May 2010 to December 2017. Hunter, 53, was given a four-year prison term and Smith, 68, received 30 months in prison. Today the court announced its decision after a three month trial. Both men were convicted of fraudulent trading and having articles for fraud purposes.
In the case against Hunter and Smith, we achieved a legal first. It was the first successful criminal enforcement action ever taken against large-scale ticket fraud. These included duplicitous methods to obtain large numbers of tickets from the main ticket agents. Their key targets were Ticketmaster, Eventim and AXS. By deliberately circumventing regulations, they resold tickets at inflated prices, thereby exploiting consumers.
Though the court issued the sentences in February 2020, Hunter and Smith appealed their convictions. The Court of Appeal rejected their appeal in November 2021. This ruling largely cemented the legal precedent they set with their case.
It was the investigation into their operations, led by National Trading Standards, that revealed the full scale of their duplicitous practices. Ruth Andrews, regional investigations manager at National Trading Standards, spoke about the importance of the case’s outcome, saying,
“Today’s result concludes a landmark case that demonstrates once and for all that dishonestly buying large quantities of tickets and reselling them at inflated prices is an unacceptable, illegal and fraudulent practice.”
The two men received significant benefits from their crimes. During the last 32 months of their fictitious activities, they raked in an unbelievable net profit of £3.5 million. Post trial/sentencing Court ordered Hunter and Smith to pay back £6.2 million. If within three months they don’t, they must serve an extra eight years in prison.
A yearlong Guardian investigation first unveiled Peter Hunter to the world. It shone a light on the obscene and symbiotic relationship between touts and “secondary ticketing” websites. This criminal investigation was instrumental in holding the fraudsters accountable and blowing their schemes wide open.