Ticket Tout Firm Accused of £6.5m Fraudulent Trading

TQ Tickets Ltd allegedly used multiple identities to buy and resell tickets, exploiting music fans and leading to some being refused entry at venues.

Mark Woods, 59, and Lynda Chenery, 51, of Dickleburgh, Norfolk, are accused of three counts of fraudulent trading. They deny the charges, but their spouses, Maria Chenery-Woods and Paul Douglas, have already pleaded guilty.
TQ Tickets Ltd, owned by Maria Chenery-Woods, used multiple identities to buy tickets for artists such as Ed Sheeran and Little Mix, before selling them on secondary ticket sites.
The firm made about £6.5m in ticket sales between June 2015 and December 2017, buying 47,000 tickets during that period using 127 names and 187 different email addresses.
The firm would speculatively list tickets for sale before they had sourced them, which sometimes led to fans being refused entry to venues.
The firm also engaged in practices including 'doing a fraudie', which involved sending customers ripped envelopes to infer that the tickets were lost-in-transit, or 'using fraud juice', which involved the use of correcting fluid, or more sophisticated digital methods, to amend tickets.