Joseph Johnson was part of a five-man fraud scheme which made hundreds of thousands of pounds by buying cheap football tickets and selling them on for much more
A football tout who described himself as “billy big balls” was part of a cunning scheme which made hundreds of thousands of pounds by selling tickets at “significantly inflated prices”.
Joseph Johnson hatched a devious scheme which grew “from bedroom computers to an operational, international business” with a base in Dubai. Alongside co-defendants Louis James, James Johnson, Liam Rice and Lee Smith, Joseph Johnson created more than 1,000 LFC memberships using fake names and details, and used these to buy tickets specifically priced at £9 before selling them on.
The “sophisticated ticket fraud” involved the men obtaining “as many Liverpool tickets as possible”, Liverpool Crown Court heard. These would then be resold “at significantly inflated prices via online secondary websites”, such as Viagogo, StubHub and Ticketbis, Liverpool Echo reports.
The court heard how Louis James and James Johnson worked in the club’s ticket office and the pair used their knowledge of the ticketing system for their own financial gain. In February 2018 four “local general sale tickets”, discounted to £9 for supporters residing in Liverpool postcodes, which were processed and sold before they had been made available to fans, were flagged as suspicious.
An investigation found that numerous other tickets in different names had been purchased using the same credit card. It was determined that James had “been responsible for processing somewhere between 40 to 50 local general tickets sales per home game”.
On one occasion a senior member of staff witnessed James be collected from the stadium in a white Mercedes 4×4 by Joseph Johnson. Later the same day, he was observed removing around 30 envelopes containing tickets, season passes and membership cards from storage boxes and “secreting them at his desk”.
Joseph Johnson, described as being “central to the business”, was later handed the envelopes by James while he was at work, the court heard. This led to the matter being reported to Merseyside Police and James’ dismissal from the club.
James’ mobile phone was seized and almost a quarter of a million messages and nearly 27,000 images were analysed by police. Nicola Daley, prosecuting, said: “Ultimately, piecing together lots of different things, the police discovered that more than 1,000 memberships appear to have either been created or used in relation to Liverpool FC tickets as part of this. Messages between the defendants showed the almost daily, minute by minute, exchange about tickets between Louis James and Joseph Johnson from 2016 onwards.”
“The business developed significantly” despite James getting caught and even “extended beyond Liverpool Football Club to the obtaining by dishonest means and then reselling of tickets to matches for other Premier League football clubs”, it was said. Police discovered that the operation had become international after the men set up their own resale business, Seatfinder UK, in April 2018.
The company had been registered in Dubai and Smith signed a lease on an office at St Helens College’s Kirkby campus, which the company “was to be operated from”. Ms Daley said: “The prosecution say that room became the heartbeat of the business. This was a business that had grown from bedroom computers to an operational, international business with a sophisticated website selling platform.
“The prosecution’s case is that the business, by this stage, had moved on significantly since its infancy. It had gone from the equivalent of the market stall to a local shop and, thereafter, to the supermarket chain or Amazon of unauthorised football resale tickets.”
After the premises was raided in 2020, documentation on computers found there were 250 memberships at Liverpool, 100 at each of Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur and 50 at Manchester City. In WhatsApp messages read out to jurors, Joseph Johnson boasted: “I’m the man in Liverpool, my b****cks are massive, billy big balls.”
James told him in response: “I’m the one in the underworld no one knows about.” Joseph Johnson then referred to him as the “Ronnie Biggs of the ticket office”.
Data from StubHub showed that the business had been involved in sales to the value of €598,746, equivalent to around £520,000 at the current exchange rate, between 2016 and 2018. Johnson’s PayPal account, relating to a hair extension business called Russian Locks, also received transfers amounting to £743,500 during the same period.
The court also heard of one message sent by Smith to Joseph Johnson in October 2018, in which he said: “Do you know how much money is on the log from the beginning of the season until now? Drum roll, £305,457.81.”
Joseph Johnson, of St Helens, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud by abuse of position and two counts of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation. The 42-year-old was jailed for 42 months on Wednesday.
Rice, 35 of Kirkby admitted one charge of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation and was jailed for 34 months. Smith, 38, of Ormskirk, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud by abuse of position and one count of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation. He was also jailed for 34 months.
James, of Kirkby, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud by abuse of position and two counts of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation. He was sentenced to 28 months behind bars.
James Johnson, of Anfield, admitted conspiracy to commit fraud by abuse of position and one offence of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation. He was given a 21-month imprisonment suspended for two years with 150 hours of unpaid work and a two-month electronically monitored curfew from 11pm to 7am.
Joseph Johnson, Rice and Smith were also banned from acting as company directors for eight years. Jonathan Egan, senior district crown prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service Mersey Cheshire, said following the hearing: “These defendants worked together to obtain huge numbers of Liverpool Football Club tickets, meant for those living locally or genuine football club members, to make huge profits by reselling them at vastly inflated prices.
“Their so-called business grew and grew and went from being the equivalent of a market stall to a multi-million-pound enterprise with a base in Dubai. Even after Louis James and James Johnson lost their jobs in the LFC ticket office, the scam continued. But their greed caught up with them in the end, and their fraud came to light.
“Most of them refused to accept their culpability, even after arrest and charge and, apart from Louis James, claimed they didn’t know the tickets were being sold at a profit. They have now been sentenced and have jail terms to contend with. They all have criminal records as fraudsters.”
