Seven people are on trial accused of being part of a conspiracy to defraud, with the alleged scam said to have involved the creation of more than 1,000 LFC memberships using fake names and details
20:30, 29 Oct 2025
Sian Woodyatt outside Liverpool Crown Court
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Sian Woodyatt outside Liverpool Crown Court(Image: Liverpool Echo)
Staff members within Liverpool FC's ticketing department are alleged to have conspired with ticket touts to flog passes for matches at Anfield Stadium "at significantly inflated prices" through platforms including Viagogo and StubHub, a court has been told.
The purported fraudulent operation is claimed to have run for several years and involved establishing over 1,000 LFC memberships using bogus identities and information, potentially raking in hundreds of thousands of pounds in profits.
Seven defendants - five men and two women - appeared before Liverpool Crown Court today, Wednesday, charged with participating in the conspiracy. Prosecutor Nicola Daley addressed a jury comprising seven men and five women during her opening statement: "In simple terms, each of the defendants on trial before you are said to have been involved in a sophisticated ticket fraud.
Joseph Johnson outside Liverpool Crown Court
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Joseph Johnson outside Liverpool Crown Court(Image: Liverpool Echo)
"The central purpose of this fraud was to obtain as many Liverpool football tickets as possible, the prosecution say by various dishonest means, in order to then resell those tickets at significantly inflated prices via online secondary websites such as Viagogo, StubHub and Ticketbis. As time went on, the fraud was extended beyond Liverpool Football Club to the obtaining, by dishonest, means and then reselling of tickets to matches for other Premier League football clubs as well."
The court was told that both Louis James and James Johnson were employed in the ticket office, with James having been on LFC's casual payroll since 2002 before stepping into this role in October 2016. Johnson, on the other hand, had previously shown fans around Anfield Stadium before being shuffled to an "identical position" in 2014, eventually parting ways with the club in December 2017.
However, in February 2018, a revamp of LFC's ticket management system flagged up four "local general sale tickets", priced at a mere £9 for supporters living in Liverpool postcodes, which were processed and sold before they had even hit the fan market. This sparked further internal probes, unearthing that a slew of other tickets under different names had been bought using the same credit card.
Angela and David Johnson outside Liverpool Crown Court
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Angela and David Johnson outside Liverpool Crown Court(Image: Liverpool Echo)
A recurring password, "Luis7", was also linked to sales to multiple supposed customers, while many transactions were traced back to the Crowne Plaza hotel on Princes Dock in Liverpool city centre. Matches against Newcastle United and FC Porto in March 2018 were among those where irregularities were spotted, with tickets seemingly bought using different bank cards but the same supporter names.
Email addresses used in these transactions "followed a similar format", comprising a person's name followed by "lfc@gmail.com". A subsequent audit then revealed that James had "been responsible for processing somewhere between 40 to 50 local general tickets sales per home game".
This resulted in a senior staff member spotting him being picked up from the ground in a white Mercedes 4x4 by co-accused Joseph Johnson, who bears no relation to James Johnson. The vehicle then pulled up near the Park pub on Walton Breck Road before James "took up his position" at the sales window of LFC's ticket office.
Later that day, he was seen taking roughly 30 envelopes filled with tickets, season passes and membership cards from storage containers and "secreting them at his desk". He then allegedly swapped messages with Joseph Johnson, described as being "central to the business", before Johnson got out of his car, walked to the window and was given the envelopes.
This prompted the incident to be flagged to Merseyside Police and James' sacking from the club. Officers confiscated his mobile phone and examined nearly a quarter of a million messages and close to 27,000 images.
Ms Daley revealed their discoveries: "Messages extracted from Louis James' phone, in fact, tell you the story, what was going on. Ultimately, piecing together lots of different things, the police discovered that over 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 court was privy to a WhatsApp conversation from August 2015, in which Louis James informed James Johnson: "My mate has 22 membership cards. Say you make £40 on each ticket for every home game, you get around £15,000. You would get more than that though, the big games would fetch well more."
Prosecutor Ms Daley elaborated: "The prosecution say that, what was being discussed at the beginning, this is it in its infancy. It is showing that Louis James has a mate who already had 22 membership cards to be able to get tickets."
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