Two guilty over £6.5m Norfolk ticket touting operation

Lynda Chenery, 54, and Mark Woods, 59, were convicted at Leeds Crown Court over their involvement in Diss-based TQ Tickets Ltd, which sold tickets worth more than £6.5million on secondary ticketing sites in two and a half years.

TQ Tickets Ltd bought tickets from Ticketmaster that it then resold on secondary sites (Image: Newsquest)

The operation was run by Maria Chenery-Woods – who is Woods’ wife and Chenery’s sister – and the trial heard how her company used multiple identities, some fake, to buy large numbers of tickets on primary sites, including Ticketmaster.

These were then re-sold at vastly inflated prices on secondary ticketing platforms such as Viagogo.

Chenery-Woods and Paul Douglas, who is Chenery’s ex-husband, of Pulham Market, had previously pleaded guilty to the same offences and all four defendants will now be sentenced at a later date.

Music lover customers were exploited and mocked

Jurors had heard that Chenery-Woods, who referred to herself as the Ticket Queen, was the driving force behind the company which operated from an address on Diss Business Park. 

Jonathan Sandiford KC, prosecuting, opened the case saying: “What this case is about is greed and dishonesty. The two defendants were ticket touts.”

He said: “They were part of a dishonest scheme that, over a number of years, exploited the love and passion that many of us have for our favourite pop bands, our favourite artists – people like Ed Sheeran and so forth.”

Ed Sheeran tickets were sold on the platform (Image: PA)

The trial had heard evidence that Ticketmaster had been aware of the company’s activities while Sheeran’s promoter, Stuart Galbraith, gave evidence about the measures they had implemented to combat the touting operation.

Those within TQ Tickets communicated via Skype messages, which were shown to the jury.

In one message, Douglas said to Chenery-Woods that the purpose of the business is to “simply rinse consumers for as much profit as they are willing to pay”.

Fake identities were used to buying up large numbers of tickets to sell on at vastly inflated prices (Image: Getty Images)

Jurors had also heard that the couples had mocked customers with one referred to as “another idiot” after buying two tickets for West End hit Harry Potter and the Cursed Child for £535 each, when the face-value price was around £120.

Other examples included tickets to see the Anthony Joshua vs Wladimir Klitschko boxing match at Wembley Stadium being sold for £220 each, despite a £60 face value.

'Doing a fraudie' - how ticket tout racket worked

Despite the multi-million pound touting operation being run from south Norfolk it had customers all over the UK and beyond. 

Mr Sandiford said they exploited fan passion for music and sports events “in order to milk them for profits”.

TQ Tickets Ltd was registered at Diss Business Park (Image: Google)

He said the actions of the firm, which included speculatively listing tickets for sale before they had even sourced them, sometimes led to fans being refused entry to venues or with poorer tickets than they paid for.

The prosecutor referred to practices including “doing a fraudie”, which involved sending customers ripped envelopes to infer that the tickets had been lost in transit, or “using fraud juice”, which involved the use of Tipp-Ex correcting fluid, or more sophisticated digital methods, to amend tickets.

In total the firm bought 47,000 tickets June 2015 to December 2017, using 127 names and 187 different email addresses. They had sales in excess of £6.5m.

Tickets for West End hit Harry Potter And The Cursed Child were sold for £535 each (Image: PA)

Woods told the court he believed there was “nothing untoward” about his wife’s business.

He said TQ Tickets was an “obsession” for her, telling jurors: “She became completely obsessed. It took priority over me, the family, and it caused conflict.”

Chenery said she did some bookkeeping work for her sister’s firm but did not think TQ Tickets was involved in any kind of fraud.