4 charged with hacking ticket sites

NEWARK, N.J. (AP) - Federal prosecutors in New Jersey say four California men made more than $25 million reselling tickets to concerts and sporting events they acquired by hacking into Ticketmaster.com and other Web sites.

Prosecutors say the men fraudulently obtained more than a million tickets. Authorities in Newark charged 40-year-old Kenneth Lowson, 37-year-old Kristofer Kirsch, 36-year-old Faisal Nahdi and 37-year-old Joel Stevenson on Monday.

The indictment charges the men with multiple wire fraud counts and gaining unauthorized access to computer systems.

Prosecutors say the trio's company, Wiseguy Tickets, allegedly devised computer programs that impersonated individual ticket buyers to bombard ticket Web sites. The programs were able to bypass safeguards meant to restrict the number of tickets each customer can buy.