Serial Ticket Fraudsters Sentenced to 17 Years in Prison
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Wednesday, 13 July 2011 |
Written by Elliott Batte
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Serial ticket scammers Terry Shepherd and Alan Scott were jailed for 15 years collectively yesterday after their long run of fraudulently selling tickets to people all over the world ended.
The two have been described as Britain’s biggest ticket fraudsters, and made millions of pounds after failing to deliver 2,500 Olympic games tickets and almost 3,000 music festival tickets , leaving thousands of fans disappointed and without entry.
Shepherd has a long history of money laundering and ticket fraud, stretching back ten years since which he has been disqualified as acting a company director. All of his ticket websites turned bust and the crook owed almost £15million in un-delivered and un-paid for tickets. When he was banned from fronting his own company, he hired Alan Scott to run Xclusive Leisure and Hospitality, the biggest firm involved in ticket scams so far. They ran bejingticketing.com, which imploded days before the games leaving hundreds of fans without tickets - including gold medal-winning Rebecca Addlington’s parents.
He lived a lavish lifestyle and had mansions over the world including one in Barbados, and a range of expensive sports cars. He also treated his wife, who was found not guilty against charges of money laundering, giving her around £700,000 from the company which she spent on luxury travelling and designer clothes. The company Xclusive even had the money to pay almost half a million pound to Google, in order to keep their sham company at the top of advertisement lists. But in the end, justice prevailed and the bogus ticket salesman was jailed for eight years.
At Stereoboard, we hate to see music fans paying over the top prices or being scammed by touts – which is why in February earlier this year we set up a project to combat ticket fraud. ‘Access All Areas’, the viral video we produced in conjunction with the project, has received over 30,000 views so far and follows the fate of a group of music fans who opted to go ‘off road’ in their route to obtaining tickets to get backstage at a major gig. They ultimately get left out in the cold – like thousands of fans (including Addlington’s parents!) are when ticket scammers strike. The video can be viewed on Stereoboard TV, or embedded below.
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