(Reuters) - Six ticket brokers reached settlements with New York’s attorney general to resolve charges they illegally bought and resold hundreds of thousands of tickets for concerts and other popular events, including on sites such as StubHub and Vivid Seats.

FILE PHOTO: New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman speaks during a news conference in New York August 21, 2014. REUTERS/Carlo Allegri/File Photo

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman on Thursday said that since 2011, brokers would use illegal software known as ticket “bots” to buy large blocks of tickets through websites such as Ticketmaster before the public could buy them.

Authorities have said this could create ticket shortages that force people hoping to attend high-demand events to pay exorbitant markups on the secondary market.

Schneiderman said one broker, Prestige Entertainment of Greenwich, Connecticut, was able in 2014 to buy 1,012 tickets in one minute to a Madison Square Garden concert the following year by the rock band U2.

The six settlements total $4.19 million in fines and disgorged profit, including $3.35 million from Prestige and $480,000 from New York-based Concert Specials.

Fifteen companies have reached settlements over ticket sales totaling $7.1 million.

“Unscrupulous ticket resellers who break the rules and take advantage of ordinary consumers are one of the major reasons why ticketing remains a rigged system,” Schneiderman said in a statement.

Prestige declined to comment. A lawyer for the company and Concert Specials was not immediately available for comment.

In November, Governor Andrew Cuomo signed legislation making it a Class A misdemeanor to use computer software such as bots to buy and resell tickets. A violation had previously carried only a civil fine. The law took effect in February.

(This version of the story corrects paragraph 4 to reflect New York Attorney General’s office correction of dates related to U2 concert.)