Ticketmaster was well aware that a Norfolk-based ticket touting company was reselling tickets on secondary websites, a woman accused of fraudulent trading has said.
Lynda Chenery is on trial in relation to her involvement in her sister Maria Chenery-Woods’s company TQ Tickets Ltd, which sold more than £6.5m of tickets on secondary ticketing sites in two and a half years.
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Leeds Crown Court has heard the firm used multiple identities, some of which were fake, to buy up large numbers of tickets for music and sports events on primary sites, including Ticketmaster, before reselling them at inflated prices on secondary ticketing platforms.
Chenery-Woods, 54, of Dickleburgh, and Paul Douglas, 56, from Pulham Market, who referred to themselves as the Ticket Queen and Ticket Boy, have already pleaded guilty to fraudulent trading.
Chenery, who was married to Douglas at the time of the alleged offences, denies the charges along with Chenery-Woods’s husband, Mark Woods.
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Giving evidence she was asked whether Ticketmaster knew about the operation’s purchasing of tickets.
“I have no doubt in my mind about that,” she replied.
She told the jury: “It was clear from conversations I have had in the office and with Maria that they were definitely aware.”
She had understood that Ticketmaster also owned some of the secondary ticketing sites at that time and “incentivised” her sister because she was “classed as a top seller or broker”, she added.
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Explaining how she did some bookkeeping work for her sister’s firm she denied ever believing that TQ Tickets, which was registered at offices on Diss Business Park, was perpetrating a fraud.
Chenery said she got on well with her sister and had agreed to become TQ’s company secretary but said Chenery-Woods told her that she “didn’t need to do anything”.
Earlier this week, Woods told a court he believed there was “nothing untoward” about his wife’s business.
The trial continues.
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