Friends & family in tout group
BY MARK McGIVERN THE official trade body for ticket touts have admitted their members scoop up gig tickets before ripping off fans.
The Fair Ticketing Alliance said touts get friends and family to spin multiple credit cards through ticket websites to pip ordinary fans.
The briefs then get placed on secondary sites such as StubHub, Get Me In and Viagogo at exorbitant prices.
The practice is growing – despite the Consumer Protection From Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 making it a “banned practice” for a trader to falsely give the impression of being a consumer.
National Trading Standards are investigating alleged ticket touts in England.
Fair Ticketing Alliance’s Steve Lee said: “The purchasing of tickets may involve explicit permissions from family, friends, agents or employees where needed.”
The Record has exposed touts such as Scot Andrew Newman who have spun large numbers of credit cards in the names of family, friends and employees to buy masses of tickets for prime gigs.
Newman’s “family business” has helped him rake in more than £3million in six years. a GRIEVING mum has been swamped with support from Scots soldiers as she battles to have her fallen son honoured.
Mum Isobel Savage wants her son William – who was killed in action in Afghanistan five years ago – to be remembered forever in his home town, Ardrossan in Ayrshire.
Corporal William “Sav” Savage died following a massive boobytrap bomb blast on April 30, 2013.
He was serving with the Royal Highland Fusiliers. Scots comrades Fusilier Sam Flint and Private Bobby Hetherington were also killed by the bomb.
More than 10,000 have joined an online campaign to remember William.
Isobel hopes her son’s name can be added to a war memorial in the town after being told she was too late to have a street named after him.
Isobel, 59, said: “Friends have been in touch to offer support. It has been great.
“I had contacted the council when I noticed building work starting at the place where William went to school. The