U.S. Justice Department sues San Diego ticket reseller over alleged bot-driven scalping scheme
The Justice Department filed a federal lawsuit accusing REPS & Company and three executives of using bots to buy millions of tickets and reselling them for over $120 million in profit.
The Trump administration, through the U.S. Department of Justice, filed a civil suit on Thursday in San Diego federal court against REPS & Company Inc. and three of its executives. The complaint, referred by the Federal Trade Commission, alleges the company employed automated bot networks and proxy servers to purchase tickets in bulk from platforms such as Ticketmaster and AXS between January 2022 and October 2025.
According to the filing, REPS created thousands of user accounts and used a team of buyers based in the Philippines to evade ticket-sale limits, acquiring roughly 18.5 million tickets for at least 83,000 events. The company is accused of spending more than $1.3 billion on these purchases and reselling the tickets on secondary marketplaces, generating at least $120.8 million in profit.
"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," Christopher Mufarrige, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement.
The complaint cites specific examples, including the use of 1,300 Ticketmaster accounts to buy 7,624 tickets for a Beyoncé concert in Kansas City, yielding an estimated $833,323 profit, and the purchase of 5,430 tickets for a Pitbull concert in New York, resulting in roughly $120,109 profit.
The lawsuit seeks monetary damages, civil penalties and a permanent injunction to prevent further violations of the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act.