This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Six people have been charged with money laundering and breaches of consumer law relating to the resale of millions of pounds’ worth of tickets for gigs and events, in a landmark prosecution that could have major implications for ticket touts.

National Trading Standards, which brought the prosecution, alleges that the defendants made more than £10m in total by harvesting tickets in bulk and selling them on through resale websites.

Timothy Connor, his girlfriend Francesca Armstrong and parents Andrew Connor and Vachirawan Connor, all of Surrey, are alleged to have used multiple names, addresses and credit cards as well as “sophisticated browser software” to obtain and sell tickets.

Prosecutors claim their company, Connoco, spent £2.3m on tickets between June 2015 and December 2017 and sold them on for £4.5m, a paper profit of £2.2m.

They were arrested last year as part of a National Trading Standards investigation known as Operation Treacle. At a hearing at York magistrates court, the defendants indicated they would enter a not guilty plea.

Prosecutors also allege that Peter Hunter and David Smith, of London, placed tickets on secondary ticketing websites 21,000 times between June 2015 and February 2018.

Their company BZZ is alleged to have bought tickets worth more than £4m and racked up sales of more than £10.8m.

The pair were arrested last year in an investigation known as Operation Eiffel. They have also indicated in court that they will plead not guilty.

On Monday at York crown court a preliminary trial date of 1 July was agreed.

The court heard that the six accused would be tried alongside a third group of defendants facing the same charges. Maria Chenery-Woods, Mark Woods and Linda Chenery, of TQ Limited, trading as Ticket Queen, were arrested last year in an investigation called Operation Zebedee.

Prosecutors did not refer to which resale websites the defendants were alleged to have used, but the judge said National Trading Standards’ case “seems to be as much about Viagogo [a ticket resale website] as anything else”.

The case could have implications for touts who buy tickets in bulk in order to sell them on at a profit via so-called secondary ticketing companies, which typically take a cut of up to 25% of the profit.