Former Ticketmaster boss sentenced for hacking rival company CrowdSurge

CrowdSurge – a website on which artists could sell pre-sale tickets to fans – was a rival ticketing company to Ticketmaster, with its headquarters in London and a US office in New York. US court documents say the company had an estimated value of more than $100m.

From 2010, Mead was CrowdSurge’s senior vice president for global operations and general manager for North America.

The BBC has seen court documents that state that when Mead left CrowdSurge in July 2012 he signed a “separation agreement”, which stated he must not retain or share any confidential information – including client lists, and marketing strategies – with any third party.

According to the court filing, the agreement also stipulated Mead should not work for another ticketing company for a year and, as part of the arrangement, CrowdSurge paid Mead approximately $52,970.

But he repeatedly breached the separation agreement, the court papers say.

By the summer of 2013, Mead was employed by Ticketmaster’s parent company, Live Nation, in a division called TicketWeb.

CrowdSurge computer server logs show at least 25 instances when its company data was accessed by computers with IP addresses registered to Ticketmaster and associated companies in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, between August 2013 and December 2015, the prosecution stated.