The FTC says a ticket broker used 75 accounts to buy 277 tickets to one concert, and a stipulated order would collect $300,000 of a $10.7 million penalty
Seventy-five accounts. Two hundred and seventy-seven tickets. One Metallica concert.
That example sits inside a complaint the Federal Trade Commission filed on Monday against Elite Events and Tickets LLC, which the agency says also trades as Smart Scalpers, and against its owners Kevin W. McKerley and Aaron L. Fera. The show was at Virginia Tech University, the buying ran from September 2024 to March 2025, and the ticket seller limited any purchaser to six. The FTC alleges the firm paid $50 to $270 a ticket and resold at $100 to $400 in the secondary marketplace.
The statute is the Better Online Ticket Sales Act, and the FTC quotes the operative clause in the release. It makes it illegal for any person to circumvent a security measure, access control system, or other technological control or measure on a website or online service that a ticket issuer uses to enforce posted event ticket limits or to maintain the integrity of posted online ticket purchasing order rules. The complaint alleges the firm did that across more than 2,400 different events.
How, according to the complaint, is the part with detail in it. Hundreds of ticket purchasing accounts created with fictitious names, addresses and phone numbers, or with the names, addresses and phone numbers of the company's own employees. Numerous virtual credit card accounts, used to generate thousands of unique card numbers. IP proxy services to conceal the address a purchase came from and make it look as though the buyers were different consumers in different places. Multi-session browsers, which open independent browsing sessions inside one application. The FTC says hundreds of agents did this work, many of them based abroad, and that the two owners were directly involved, appearing in an April 2025 CBS Mornings documentary about their reselling operation.
Set against that, the release describes the defenses ticket issuers run. Ticketmaster and AXS cap the quantity selector at the purchase limit and check whether a purchase is associated with a verifiable account and a unique credit card, email address, phone number and IP address. Every item on that list has a counter on the list above it.
The proposed order settles the allegations rather than tries them. It imposes more than $10.7 million in civil penalties against the company and both owners, partially suspended once $300,000 is paid, on the basis that they cannot pay the full amount, and the full sum becomes due immediately if they are found to have lied about their finances. It permanently bars them from circumventing security measures or purchase-order rules, from using multiple accounts, multiple IP addresses or multi-session browsers to get past limits, and from paying for tickets with any card, bank account, prepaid account or digital wallet in anyone's name other than Fera's or McKerley's.
The Commission voted 2-0 to authorize the filing, in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Georgia, Augusta Division.
Two things this item is careful about. The FTC files a complaint when it has reason to believe the law is being or is about to be violated, so everything above is an allegation, and a stipulated final order has the force of law only when a district judge approves and signs it. And the defendants agreed to the order rather than contest it, which is their answer on the record. This desk did not separately seek comment from them or their counsel, and the release does not say whether they admitted the allegations.
