Exposed: The supertout who made mugs of us twice over Canadian scalper used ‘bots’ to hoover up briefs before charging fans exorbitant prices
A MILLIONAIRE supertout exposed by the Daily Record has been named among the Paradise Papers tax dodgers.
Revelations about Canadian Julien Lavallee’s plans for a massive, tax-free expansion into the UK have led to calls for a criminal probe into his relationship with online ticketing firm StubHub.
Campaigners are urging MPs in the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee to grill executives over the rip-offs engineered by touts like Lavallee on their sites.
Industry monitors believe ticket touts are failing to pay £100million annually through avoidance tactics.
The investigation by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was sparked by the Record’s appearance at Parliament during our investigation into ticket abuse.
We told MPs that Lavallee is one of the world’s biggest scalpers, with the SSE Hydro in Glasgow among key target venues.
Our “disturbing” revelations about Lavallee paying off venues to skim tickets from the top of public sales intensified demands for a greater crackdown on secondary sales platforms – but the touts have continued to thrive.
The CBC’s subsequent search for Lavallee’s name among the six million Paradise Papers documents uncovered how the tout’s business in Canada and the US turned over £6million in 2014.
The documents prove that Lavallee, 30, was seeking to take on an employee in the UK but tax avoidance specialists Appleby – whose hacked accounts form the bulk of the Paradise papers – advised him against it, as it would close his tax loophole.
In recent weeks, Lavallee’s I Want Ticket Inc firm have applied to be dissolved.
Just weeks after the Record first put the spotlight on Lavallee in November last year, he was dumped by publicity-shy Appleby.
The latest revelations confirm everything the Record told Parliament – that Lavallee was working furiously to cut deals with venues in order to bypass the regular tickets sales.
CBC News uncovered a sales ledger from an Adele show in London this year that reveals how he controlled credit cards in 15 different names to buy 310 tickets in 25 minutes.
When contacted by investigators, people at some addresses linked to Lavallee’s credit cards had no idea that any ticket purchases had been registered to their home, nor had they ever heard of Lavallee.
The investigation makes clear that Lavallee believed he could acquire tickets from concert promoters and venues directly, bypassing avenues open to fans.
A business plan he submitted to Appleby promised to “create relationships with venues from the UK for premium access to tickets for secondary resale purposes”.
The activity echoes that detailed in our expose, which told how Lavallee was selling 350 Take That tickets for the O2 Arena in London at £777 each – before the public sale even started for the gigs.
He targeted many other tours for acts like Metallica and Ed Sheeran.
The Adele ledger showed how credit cards were used in the names of his family members, including his dad and wife, and close variations on their names. Records show the purchases simultaneously bounced around the globe – from Chicago, to Los Angeles, to London and to Montreal. Lavallee’s methods are identical to those of Linlithgow-based Andrew Newman, another industrial-scale supertout exposed in the Record. We detailed how he uses multiple credit cards in the names of family, friends and staff members to harvest tickets by the thousand. Many others are suspected of using the same techniques. UK ticketing investigator Reg Walker said the Adele sales ledger confirms that aggressive software is used by Lavallee, who previously denied using bots. Walker said: “Given the success rate, even if you had a dozen people sitting there typing their details over again you would not get these results. It’s simply not feasible. “There’s no legal way to harvest tickets. If you pretend to be multiple consumers, or if you pretend to be a consumer and you are acting as a business, it’s a criminal offence.” Walker said that touts have been known to run more than 70 credit cards at a time. He added: “We have estimated that HMRC are out of pocket by around £90million to £110million, based on an industry said to be worth a billion pounds each year.
“It is very easy to generate lots of credit cards for a business if you are prepared to guarantee them with a bond.
“You can mix in friends and family and create a vast number of buyers that falsely give the appearance of individuals.”
Walker believes a criminal investigation is overdue. He added: “In view of recent evidence, it needs to take place now in order to protect the public.”
Adam Webb, of the anti-tout FanFair Alliance, said: “Thanks to the Daily Record’s reporting, and to our own investigations, we already knew that Julien Lavallee was harvesting extraordinary volumes of tickets and then reselling through StubHub.
“However, thanks to the Paradise Papers we now have a much clearer picture as to the extent of his activities – of the revenues he has been generating, of his use of offshore companies, and of the complicity of StubHub in fuelling his activities.
“This is the true face of so-called secondary ticketing, and it’s an absolute disgrace.
“We urgently need a root-andbranch reform of this market. We urge the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee to revisit the issue of ticket abuse and for the Government to enforce legislation in a meaningful way.”
MP Nigel Adams, who has been a key player in moves to stub out the touts, said: “These are disturbing revelations.
“When I was a member of the Select Committee and we looked at this issue, I was disturbed to hear that some resale sites did not feel they had the responsibility to monitor their platforms for this kind of activity.
“I am looking forward to the outcome of the CMA’s investigation, as it seems to me that some of the laws we worked hard to pass in Parliament are not being followed.”
Lavallee’s lawyer said his company “carries out all their activities in accordance with the laws and rules of the jurisdictions in which they operate and sell”.
It seems some of the laws we passed are not being followed
NIGEL ADAMS MP