Taylor Swift Eras Tour among $635,000 in event tickets 2 are charged with stealing, reselling on StubHub

Two suspects are facing charges for what the Queens District Attorney’s Office said Monday is the cybertheft of more than 900 concert and event tickets, including those for Taylor Swift's Eras Tour, later resold on StubHub for over $600,000 in profit.

Authorities said one of the defendants worked for Sutherland, a third-party contractor in Kingston, Jamaica, and along with a yet-to-be-apprehended accomplice, used stolen ticket URLs to funnel 993 tickets to two co-conspirators in Queens. The tickets were allegedly stolen between June 2022 and July 2023 and led to 350 StubHub orders totaling $635,000, officials said.

One of the Queens co-conspirators is now dead, authorities said.

Arrested were Shamara P. Simmons, of Jamaica, Queens, and Tyrone Rose, of Kingston, Jamaica, the district attorney’s office said.

Both defendants were charged with second-degree grand larceny, first-degree and fourth-degree computer tampering, and fourth-degree conspiracy.

The charges carry a maximum sentence of 3-to-15 years in prison for a conviction on the top count, the district attorney’s office said.

Court records show Simmons was arraigned Thursday in Queens Criminal Court before Judge Anthony M. Battisti and entered a not guilty plea. Rose was arraigned Friday before Judge Sharifa M. Nasser-Cuellar and also entered a plea of not guilty. Simmons, represented by Legal Aid, was released on his own recognizance, while Rose, represented at arraignment by a public defender, was released with "nonmonetary conditions."

Both are due back in court Friday, records indicate.

In a statement Monday, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz said Rose and the accomplice, while employed by Sutherland, used their access to the StubHub computer system to enter "a secure area of the network" where previously sold tickets were given a URL and "queued to be emailed to the purchaser" for download, then redirected those URLs to Simmons and a co-conspirator in Queens.

The rerouted tickets were then posted back to StubHub for resale, the district attorney’s office said.

Most of the tickets were for "high value and high-profile events" such as the Eras Tour, as well as concerts by Adele and Ed Sheeran, NBA games and the U.S. Open Tennis Championships at Flushing Meadow.

By John Valenti

john.valenti@newsday.com

John Valenti, a reporter at Newsday since 1981, has been honored nationally by the Associated Press and Society of the Silurians for investigative, enterprise and breaking news reporting, as well as column writing, and is the author of “Swee'pea,” a book about former New York playground basketball star Lloyd Daniels. Valenti is featured in the Emmy Award-winning ESPN 30-for-30 film “Big Shot.”