The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has sued ticket broker REPS & Company and three of its executives, alleging they bypassed purchase limits to buy millions of tickets for resale.
According to the complaint, REPS bought more than eight tickets to each of at least 83,000 events between January 2022 and October 2025.
It spent over USD $1.3 billion amassing more than 18.5 million tickets to those events, and made at least USD $120.8 million in profit reselling them, the complaint alleges.
The lawsuit was filed on Thursday (October 15) in the US District Court for the Southern District of California, on a referral from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
The 22-page complaint, published by the DOJ, can be read in full here.
Alongside San Diego-based REPS, the lawsuit names CEO Ryan Pancheri, President Brian Archibald, and COO Nicholas Totagrande.
The case is brought under the FTC Act and the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, a 2016 law that makes it illegal to get around the systems ticket sellers use to enforce purchase limits, and to sell tickets obtained that way.
The complaint says the events REPS targeted include concerts by Beyoncé, Luke Bryan, Post Malone, and hundreds of other acts, alongside sporting events, comedy shows, and Broadway productions.
In one example, the complaint alleges that REPS used at least 1,300 accounts to buy 7,624 tickets through Ticketmaster for a single show on Beyoncé‘s Renaissance World Tour.
That concert, at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, on October 1, 2023, had a purchase limit of between four and eight tickets per buyer. Ticket issuers sometimes set limits like these at the request of the performing artist, according to the filing.
REPS made approximately USD $833,323 in profit reselling those tickets, the complaint claims.
For a Pitbull concert at the Empower FCU Amphitheater in Syracuse, New York, on September 7, 2024, the company allegedly used at least 700 accounts to buy 5,430 tickets.
“That venue holds an estimated 17,500 people, and Defendants purchased and resold nearly one-third of that capacity, making approximately $120,109 in profit,” the complaint states.
“Defendants’ business model is predicated on identifying events for which tickets will be in high demand and [buying] up tickets for those events before ordinary consumers can, which they do by using teams of purchasers primarily located outside the United States.”
US Department of Justice’s complaint
“Defendants’ business model is predicated on identifying events for which tickets will be in high demand and [buying] up tickets for those events before ordinary consumers can, which they do by using teams of purchasers primarily located outside the United States,” the complaint reads.
“Defendants use analytics software and data scraping to track information such as artists’ popularity and tour information, and they monitor secondary marketplace trends to determine which events are likely to sell out and what tickets are likely to be the most profitable.”
Most of the company’s purchasers are based in the Philippines, according to the complaint.
The government alleges that REPS ran thousands of purchasing accounts on Ticketmaster, AXS, and other ticketing sites in other people’s names, linked to virtual credit cards and phone numbers the company controlled.
To set up those accounts, REPS signed “power of attorney” agreements with employees and outside partners allowing it to use their names and addresses, according to the filing.
The company has allegedly created as many as 40 accounts from one person’s name and address, and an average of 19 per person.
The complaint alleges that REPS has used ticket industry service providers, including Broker Genius (which does business as Automatiq), to fully automate the creation of hundreds of accounts. Broker Genius is not a defendant in the case.
The complaint also claims REPS used banks of SIM cards to receive verification codes, and proxy services to hide where its purchasers were.
It further alleges that REPS kept an “Error Bible” of Ticketmaster error messages.
“The Error Bible instructs Defendants’ employees and agents on how to resolve or work around Ticketmaster‘s ticket limit controls, and they have developed and refined standard operating procedures for troubleshooting and bypassing ticket limits on Ticketmaster’s website,” the complaint states.
Internal REPS instructions on account creation, quoted in the complaint, read: “In order to combat the Limit Error problem, we make modifications to the base address and use the new modified address to create a new [Ticketmaster account].”
The filing says that in September 2025, the defendants learned Ticketmaster had begun flagging and suspending accounts whose IP addresses changed too often.
Soon after, in strategic planning for 2026, Totagrande identified a goal to “reduce transaction failure, suspended errors, and account blocks by keeping the same proxy/IP tied to each account,” the complaint alleges.
The tickets were resold on platforms including StubHub, Vivid Seats, SeatGeek, Gametime, TicketNetwork, and Ticketmaster‘s own resale marketplace, the complaint says.
On a 2022 financial audit questionnaire signed by Archibald, REPS listed the BOTS Act as a law applicable to the company, the filing notes.
REPS learned of the FTC’s investigation into another broker, Key Investment Group (KIG), in July 2025, and of the agency’s BOTS Act lawsuit against Live Nation and Ticketmaster in September 2025, the complaint alleges.
“Despite knowing of the Better Online Ticket Sales Act and its enforcement, Defendants continue to operate their ticket brokering business as they have since 2017, using numerous ticket issuer accounts, concealed IP addresses, and other means to obtain tickets…,” the complaint adds.
The DOJ is asking the court to permanently bar the defendants from further violations, impose civil penalties for each violation, and award other monetary relief.
The complaint does not put a figure on the penalties or say how many violations the DOJ is counting.
Under the FTC‘s current penalty schedule, the maximum civil penalty for each violation of this kind is USD $53,088.
“Despite knowing of the Better Online Ticket Sales Act and its enforcement, Defendants continue to operate their ticket brokering business as they have since 2017, using numerous ticket issuer accounts, concealed IP addresses, and other means to obtain tickets.”
US Department of Justice’s complaint
“The Justice Department is committed to holding accountable individuals and businesses that drive up the cost of event tickets by illegally exceeding ticket purchase limits and reselling those unlawfully obtained tickets with exorbitant markups,” said Brett A. Shumate, Assistant Attorney General of the DOJ’s Civil Division. “Working alongside the FTC, we will continue to enforce the BOTS Act to protect consumers from such conduct.”
“REPS’ entire business model is focused on trying to game the ticket-purchasing system in order to obtain as many tickets as possible to resell at inflated prices to consumers,” said Christopher Mufarrige, Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “Companies that seek to profit by driving up prices or depriving ordinary fans of access to reasonably priced tickets to their favorite shows or events should be on notice that we are watching and will take action to stop this unlawful conduct.”
The DOJ noted that “the claims made in the complaint are allegations only, and there has been no determination of liability.”
MBW has contacted REPS for comment.
The case follows an executive order signed by President Donald Trump on March 31, 2025, targeting ticket scalping and hidden fees.
In August 2025, the FTC sued Maryland-based KIG, alleging it spent nearly USD $57 million on at least 379,776 tickets, including for Taylor Swift‘s Eras Tour, and resold a portion for around USD $64 million.
KIG had argued that its purchases did not use automated software, or bots.
On April 29 this year, Chief US District Judge George L. Russell III in Maryland refused to dismiss the FTC’s case against KIG, ruling that the BOTS Act “unambiguously applies to ‘any person’ and not just to ‘bots.'”
The FTC and seven states are also suing Live Nation and Ticketmaster, alleging, among other things, that Ticketmaster let brokers exceed artists’ ticket limits and profited from fees when the tickets were resold.
On September 28, US District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong rejected the companies’ request to throw out the case.
In a filing on Tuesday (October 13), Live Nation and Ticketmaster called the lawsuit “misguided” and accused the FTC of trying to “flip the Act on its head” by using it against them.Music Business Worldwide
