• Hackers are breaking into the accounts of some Ticketmaster users and transferring tickets to themselves.
• Two concertgoers said it was shocking, but they got their tickets back in time to attend their shows.
• After BI asked Ticketmaster for comment, it refunded the two concertgoers for the cost of their tickets.

In September, Vashti-Jasmine McKenzie noticed that an event had mysteriously disappeared from her Google Calendar. It was a reminder of an Usher concert in Dallas on October 5, synced to his Ticketmaster account.

McKenzie opened her email and was shocked: The night before, a stranger had broken into her account, accessed McKenzie’s two tickets, for which she had paid $550, and transferred them out of her account.

“If this happened in real life, if someone cheated on me, it would be like I was being robbed,” said McKenzie, a 42-year-old conference director.

McKenzie, a music fan who said she spent approximately $10,000 on shows in 2024, eventually got her tickets back and went to the show, but remains critical of Ticketmaster.

McKenzie isn’t the only concertgoer who suddenly found herself without a ticket. Similar incidents have been reported in Los Angeles, nashvilleand Charlotte, North Carolina. The playbook is usually the same: Ticketmaster customers purchase tickets to see their favorite artists, only to later receive an email saying their tickets were transferred from their online wallets by an unknown hacker and quickly claimed.

These types of scams are just the latest in a series of headaches for the ticket giant. Following a data breach earlier this year and criticism from big stars like Taylor Swift, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced in May that it filed an antitrust lawsuit. lawsuit against Live Nation, Ticketmaster’s parent companyalleging that the company’s “conduct is anti-competitive and illegal.” Live Nation, worth approximately $28 billion as of Nov. 8, has a strong grip on the live entertainment industry. The Justice Department said in its complaint that “through Ticketmaster, Live Nation controls approximately 80% or more of the primary concert ticket sales at major concert venues and an increasing proportion of ticket resales at the secondary market.

In response, Live Nation said the Justice Department’s lawsuit would not address fans’ issues with ticket prices and their ability to purchase tickets.

Still, experiencing the ticket transfer scam firsthand has led McKenzie and at least one other customer to fear their purchases are unsafe.

In October, Mika City, a 28-year-old data analyst from Grand Prairie, Texas, spent $400 on two tickets to rapper Don Toliver’s show in Houston. Two days after purchasing them, he received an email at 6:08 a.m. from Ticketmaster saying his tickets were being transferred to someone named “Floyd George.”

Just 39 seconds later, he received another email: “Floyd George” had accepted the transfer of the notes and the notes had been removed from his account.

All of this happened before City even woke up, and even though he thought he had protected his account in June by changing his password.

City was also able to recover his stolen tickets through Ticketmaster and attend the show, but added that the experience was stressful.

“I’m still afraid this will happen again,” City told BI.

Although Ticketmaster reinstated McKenzie and City’s tickets in time for their concerts, after Business Insider reached out for comment, the company refunded both the original cost of their tickets. He did not respond to BI’s other questions about account hacks and customer security.

A Live Nation executive told CBS NewsHowever, the company limited Taylor Swift ticket transfers to 72 hours before concerts, following online ticket thefts specifically targeting the Eras tour. In some cases, Ticketmaster has also required two-factor authentication for ticket holders to make transfers. The Live Nation executive recommended that Ticketmaster account holders have a unique password that is not used for any other platform.

Recovering tickets can be a harrowing experience

After realizing that Usher’s tickets had been transferred out of his account, McKenzie said he called Ticketmaster and reported the incident to its fraud department, but did not immediately receive a response.

Two days after his call, the tickets reappeared in his account, with the same seats and at no additional cost. But it was enough to scare McKenzie about what would have happened if he hadn’t noticed the calendar change.

At the Usher concert, McKenzie added, he saw two women discover in real time that they had been victims of a similar scam. They opened the Ticketmaster wallet on their phones at a gate and discovered they were gone, he said.

City got their tickets back a day after they were transferred from their account, a week before the concert. He said he called repeatedly to contact Ticketmaster’s fraud department, who told him his case would be treated with high priority because of how soon his event was.

For good measure, he also filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau about the theft of his tickets, as well as a dispute with his bank. BBB forwarded the complaint to Ticketmaster, according to screenshots of the online exchange that City shared with BI. The company responded through BBB a day after City already he got his fines back, saying it would aggravate his case.

She thought she would have to repurchase the tickets, she added, so she was surprised and pleased when Ticketmaster reinstated them.

“I was really surprised because everyone I’ve seen has said it took them forever or they never got them back,” City said.

Ticketmaster’s recent problems

In May, Live Nation said it was investigating a data breach that affected some users who had purchased tickets in North America. The leaked information may have included customer emails, phone numbers, encrypted credit cards and other personal information, Ticketmaster said in a statement.

The company said at the time that the password information was not part of the data breach and that customer accounts were secure.

Fans and artists alike have complained about how difficult it is to buy tickets in the first place.

In November 2022, Taylor Swift publicly addressed Ticketmaster after it announced that it would cancel the general sale of its Eras Tour after depleting its inventory during the pre-sale.

“It’s really amazing that 2.4 million people got tickets, but it really bothers me that so many of them feel like they went through several bear attacks to get them,” Swift wrote in a statement posted to Instagram.

last month, Oasis fans in the UK rise up against Ticketmaster after noticing an increase in ticket prices for the long-awaited reunion tour due to the company’s model of adjusting prices based on demand. The outrage was so pronounced that a UK government antitrust regulator is investigating the company’s practices.

For now, many fans are stuck using Ticketmaster to see their favorite artists, even if some worry about the security of their purchases.

City told BI that even after getting their tickets back, they were still worried they would disappear from their account, even after changing their password again to protect them.

“If I didn’t have to buy from Ticketmaster, I wouldn’t do it,” he said.