Festival Ticket Con Artist Banned From Being Company Director For 13 Years
Wednesday, 05 June 2013
Written by Elliott Batte
A major ticket tout who ripped off hundreds of fans using five different companies has been banned from acting as a company director for 13 years this week, having made almost £700,000.
According to the Croydon Guardian, John Joseph Lupton, a 50 year-old male from Thornton Heath, used five companies - Commercial Logistics and Trading, EU Ticket Shop, Festival Ticket Store, Lines Direct, and Williams & Hill (which traded as VIP Block Tickets) - to con people into buying tickets for Reading and Leeds Festivals which would never be delivered.
Shamelessly, he registered the name of a woman (who died in 2009, which was before some of his companies even existed) he claimed to be his girlfriend as his co-director, and then blamed her for the scam. It’s believed he cost credit card companies in excess of £360,000 after denying any of his ‘customers’ refunds.
Before the companies were all wound up in 2010, he managed to withdraw a hefty £674,366 from their accounts, leaving credit companies to foot the bill - but he’s now been banned from being a director until May 2026, following an investigation by the Insolvency Service. Paul Titherington - the official receiver in the Insolvency Service’s public interest unit - has said:
“These companies claimed they could supply concert tickets but in most of the known transactions they never supplied the tickets ordered, nor made the required refunds to customers. These companies have cynically exploited and disappointed customers and in particular caused credit card merchant service providers to lose hundreds of thousands of pounds.”
“Investigators were unable to corroborate Mr Lupton’s claims of a co-director who was using a fake identity and has now vanished into thin air. The lengthy period of this disqualification shows that the courts consider Mr Lupton very much to be responsible for this cynical scam. The Insolvency Service will pursue who misuse companies to deprive members of the public of goods they have paid for and leave credit card providers to reimburse them for their lost money.”
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