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Maria Chenery-Woods was a ticket tout who ran an operation, titled TQ Tickets, which involved the buying and reselling of tickets at hiked prices for several years. The illegal enterprise was estimated to be a multi-million-pound endeavor when she was caught in 2017.
Her trial took place in subsequent years and now she has been sentenced to 4 years in prison for fraudulent trading. The presiding judge, Simon Batiste elaborated on her crime in his ruling, stating:
"What was being done was purely to maximise profit and out of greed. Your aim was to rinse or fleece customers out of as much money as you could."
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He later added:
"Some secondary ticketing sites and, indeed, possibly some primary sites, were complicit in what you were doing. But that provides no mitigation."
Alongside Maria Chenery-Woods, her husband Mark Woods, her sister and ex-employee Lynda Chenery, and her employee Paul Douglas were also sentenced to prison, for the former two with suspended prison and the latter for two years.
Maria Chenery-Woods's lawyer argued against prison sentence
Maria Chenery-Woods's lawyer Mr Gozem appealed against the prison sentence levelled at her, stating at the court:
"I invite you to accept that you are sentencing a broken woman who has suffered for her own wrong-doing for more than six years. All of this at a time when we're reminded that prisons are more than just full. They are almost at breaking point, as the initiative this morning seems to confirm. These are non-violent, non-se**al, non-frightening offences."
The initiative the lawyer referred to is known as Operation Early Dawn, conducted by the UK Ministry of Justice to combat prison overcrowding. The measure will see the use of police cells for transferring defendants on trial, with the said trial being delayed. The measure will see some defendants released on bail due to the delay.
The initiative is the latest in a line of so-called Operations used to address the prison overcrowding problem, which has previously included releasing prisoners into house arrests, among other measures.
According to her lawyer, Wood's criminal offenses do not fall under the list of offenses that need immediate custodial punishment. Moreover, her lawyer also went on to describe how she has suffered since her arrest in 2017.
Maria Chenery-Woods's criminal operation ran from 2015 to 2017 and amassed a total revenue of £6.5 million, with more wealth remaining in the thousands of unsold tickets still remaining at the time the operation was busted in Dickleburg.
Woods and her enterprise utilized over 100 identities to buy the tickets for various concerts such as Ed Sheeran or Lady Gaga concerts from vendors like Ticketmaster and AXS for reselling at hiked prices. This operation included the identities of a real 10-year-old child as well as completely fake IDs.
The enterprise also created a network of ticket buyers and sellers, including college students. These tickets would often result in failure to get admission into concerts by fans who purchased said tickets, leading to monetary loss for them.
The total number of tickets sold is estimated to be around 47,000 via 127 names and over 87 email addresses. The tickets were resold using platforms such as Viaggo and Stub Hub. Among the testimonies heard was that of Ed Sheeran's manager Stuart Camp as well as music promoter Stuart Galbraith.
