Six years, $420k fine for StubHub fraudster

An Ohioan man has been sentenced to more than six years in prison for fraudulently buying hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of concert tickets and reselling them on the secondary market.

Twenty-nine-year-old Daniel Mercede, of Bay Village, near Cleveland, was yesterday issued with a 79-month prison term and a fine of US$424,222 by judge Sara Lioi after pleading guilty to bank fraud, access device fraud and operating an unlicensed money transmitting business.

According to court documents, Mercede used stolen credit card information from to buy tickets from recently acquired secondary ticketing site ScoreBig and resell them for profit on StubHub, earning more than $3 million – which he spent on “luxury cars, expensive jewelry [sic] and exotic vacations” – between 2014 and 2016.

“Mercede was motivated solely by greed. … Prison is the proper place for him”

“Mr Mercede was motivated solely by greed,” says the acting US attorney for northern Ohio, David A. Sierleja. “He has shown himself to be a serial scammer and identity thief who is a clear economic danger to the community. Prison is the proper place for him.”

The Internal Revenue Service’s Frank S. Turner II adds: “Daniel Mercede perpetrated a complex scheme involving identity theft and the illegal use of an unlicensed bitcoin exchange service that was driven by insatiable greed and a blatant disregard for the tremendous damage inflicted on innocent victims.

“Be assured that IRS Criminal Investigation, together with our law enforcement partners and the US attorney’s office, will hold those who engage in similar behaviour fully accountable.”

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