New York (CNN) Ticketmaster entered into a plea agreement with federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, New York and will pay $10 million in fines to resolve charges that it accessed the computer systems of a competitor without authorization. "Ticketmaster employees repeatedly -- and illegally -- accessed a competitor's computers without authorization using stolen passwords to unlawfully collect business intelligence," Acting U.S. Attorney Seth DuCharme said Wednesday in a press release. The company will pay the fine to resolve a five-count criminal information filed Wednesday with counts including conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, computer intrusion of a protected computer, computer intrusion in furtherance of fraud, wire fraud conspiracy and wire fraud. According to the deferred prosecution agreement unsealed Wednesday, a former Ticketmaster employee named Zeeshan Zaidi went to work for Live Nation in 2013 as a consultant, and was hired full time to work for Ticketmaster in 2014 after leaving a competing company, which is unnamed in the court filing.

Source: CNN December 30, 2020 21:33 UTC