The uncle of a Liverpool FC first team player has been accused in court of handing over a "large amount" of match tickets to a tout for cash. Joseph Johnson, who referred to himself as "Billy big balls", allegedly colluded with staff in the club's ticket office and sold passes to away games for up to £400.
His fraudulent operation, which involved reselling tickets at "significantly inflated prices", spanned several years and included the creation of more than 1,000 LFC memberships using false names and details. This scheme reportedly generated hundreds of thousands of pounds in profits.
It was also claimed that he and his associates ran the "Amazon" of their trade from a leased office at a sixth form college.
A previous trial at Liverpool Crown Court heard allegations that Johnson and his co-defendants Louis James, James Johnson, Liam Rice and Lee Smith were "involved in a sophisticated ticket fraud". The "central purpose was to obtain as many Liverpool football tickets as possible", which would then be resold "at significantly inflated prices via online secondary websites", such as Viagogo, StubHub and Ticketbis.
Prosecutor Nicola Daley outlined how both Louis James and James Johnson were employed in the club's ticket office. Louis James had been casually employed by LFC since as early as 2002 before moving to this role in October 2016.
Liam Rice and Lee Smith outside Liverpool Crown Court
Liam Rice and Lee Smith outside Liverpool Crown Court (Image: Liverpool Echo)
James Johnson, on the other hand, had previously been an Anfield Stadium tour guide before being reassigned to an "identical position" in 2014, leaving the club in December 2017.
Nevertheless, in February 2018, an enhancement to LFC's ticketing system uncovered four "local general sale tickets", specifically priced at £9 for supporters living within Liverpool postcodes, which had been processed and sold prior to being made available to fans.
This discovery prompted additional internal enquiries, which exposed that countless other tickets under different names had been bought using an identical credit card.
The same password, "Luis7", was also employed for purchases to multiple purported customers, whilst many transactions were conducted using the address of the Crowne Plaza hotel on Princes Dock in Liverpool city centre.
Joseph Johnson outside Liverpool Crown Court
Joseph Johnson outside Liverpool Crown Court (Image: Liverpool Echo)
Matches against Newcastle United and FC Porto during March 2018 were amongst those where irregularities were spotted, with tickets apparently bought using various bank cards but identical supporter names.
Email addresses that were used meanwhile "followed a similar format", comprising a person's name followed by "lfc@gmail.com".
A subsequent audit then determined that James had "been responsible for processing somewhere between 40 to 50 local general tickets sales per home game".
This resulted in him being witnessed by a senior staff member being collected from the stadium in a white Mercedes 4x4 by Joseph Johnson, who is no relation to James Johnson, on one occasion.
The vehicle then parked near the adjacent 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 approximately 30 envelopes filled with tickets, season passes and membership cards from storage boxes and "hiding them at his desk."
Lee Smith and Liam Rice outside Liverpool Crown Court
Lee Smith and Liam Rice outside Liverpool Crown Court (Image: Liverpool Echo)
He then reportedly exchanged messages with Joseph Johnson, who was described as being "central to the business", before leaving his vehicle, approaching the window and receiving the envelopes.
This led to Merseyside Police being informed and James' subsequent dismissal from the club. Detectives confiscated his mobile phone at this point and analysed nearly a quarter of a million messages and almost 27,000 images.
Ms Daley commented on their findings: "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 jury heard about a WhatsApp conversation in August 2015, when Louis James told 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."
Despite James eventually being apprehended, jurors heard that "the business developed significantly" from this juncture and ultimately "extended beyond Liverpool Football Club to the obtaining by dishonest means and then reselling of tickets to matches for other Premier League football clubs".
The seizure of Joseph Johnson's mobile phone, following his arrest on Aug. 8, 2019, resulted in officers uncovering a WhatsApp group containing him, James, Smith and Rice as members.
This resulted in the discovery of messages "in relation to the buying and selling of tickets on not only a large, nationwide, but an international scale".
This occurred after they established their own resale enterprise, Seatfinder UK, in April 2018, with conversations in August of that year having seemingly referenced 80 tickets for matches against Paris Saint German and Napoli being sold for a combined £12,500, despite having been valued at a total of £720 at face value.
The firm had been incorporated in Dubai, "away from the eyes of UK law", in late March before, on April 10, Smith secured a lease on premises at St Helens College's Kirkby campus, from which the company "was to be operated from".
Footage which was later retrieved from Joseph Johnson's phone revealed rows of desks in this space, leased at a cost of £550 per month and equipped with dozens of computers, seemingly for the purpose of "harvesting" tickets. The website meanwhile promoted itself as "the UK's number one for ticket resellers and buyers" and provided a "100 per cent money back guarantee" for unhappy customers.
Ms Daley stated: "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."
Computing equipment that was later confiscated when the property was searched during summer 2020 held a document which appeared to reference the operation possessing 250 memberships at Liverpool FC, 100 at each of Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur and 50 at Manchester City.
The jury also heard several additional WhatsApp messages that had been sent between the defendants, with Louis James describing Joseph Johnson as having an "empire" in one exchange.
In another conversation, the latter bragged "I'm the man in Liverpool, my b****cks are massive, billy big balls".
James responded "I'm the one in the underworld no one knows about", before Joseph Johnson called him the "Ronnie Biggs of the ticket office". Joseph Johnson, from Chelford Road in Eccleston, St Helens, eventually admitted guilt to conspiracy to commit fraud by abuse of position and two counts of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation on the second day of his trial.
The 42-year-old appeared back at the same court for sentencing this afternoon, Friday.
During today's proceedings, Ms Daley revealed that one email demonstrated the "mastermind of the business" was selling tickets for home matches against Burnley, Stoke City, Chelsea and West Ham United at £90, £125, £200 and £125 respectively. Away fixtures at Everton and Manchester United were meanwhile being promoted at £250 and £400.
StubHub data linked to the same email address revealed it had facilitated sales worth €598,746, roughly £520,000 at today's exchange rate, between 2016 and 2018. His PayPal account, connected to a hair extension enterprise called Russian Locks, also processed transfers totalling £743,500 during the identical timeframe.
Regarding the £9 tickets acquired by Johnson's scheme, Ms Daley explained: "Tickets for local supporters, priced to make football accessible to all, were being diverted and sold for highly inflated prices. That was the criminality, not that there was a genuine financial loss to Liverpool Football Club."
The court heard about a message sent by Smith to Joseph Johnson in October 2018, where he stated: "Do you know how much money is on the log from the beginning of the season until now? Drum roll, £305,457.81."
Ms Daley continued to say that additional evidence, not presented during the halted trial, "related to the uncle of a first team player coming to the defendant's car and transferring a large amount of tickets for a large amount of cash". Although the footballer involved was not identified, she added: "I was unsure about current players or players at the time meeting with any of these defendants."
Speaking on behalf of Johnson, Dominic Thomas, his counsel, said: "Liverpool Football Club made no loss. The customers of this fraud gave it a 4.5 out of 5 rating on Trustpilot."
When Judge David Swinnerton noted that "customers of drug dealers are often happy with the product", Mr Thomas responded: "Not always, and not on Trustpilot. It is a fact that customers of this fraud felt able to advertise their satisfaction with it on a public forum.
"They are not, in essence, the victims of some dastardly, sinister misrepresentation. Here, the gravamen of the offence is misrepresentation. The preponderance of customers, your honour can respectfully and properly find, knew very well what they were getting.
"I am not suggesting that this is not a criminal offence. I am not suggesting that he is not going to jail. It is not a tangible harm in terms of loss or impact to the customers. It is not a tangible harm in terms of loss or impact to the football club.
"There was dishonesty in the ticket office. That was dishonesty which has warped what ought to have been going on in this ticket office, mainly, people who would have got cheaper tickets could not do so.
"There is another side to this defendant. He is lightly and not relevantly convicted. He has got two children. The eldest is nine, the youngest is six.
"Your honour will have seen that the defendant's partner has recently had some very difficult medical circumstances in relation to partial sight, which has required the defendant, over the course of the last year or so, to look after her in a very practical sense, and with the great distress and fear that having something like that happen to you can cause. His parents have become increasingly fragile, and the need for him to go and help them has become greater than it was.
"He is a man involved in giving back to his community. He is involved in a number of charitable enterprises. During covid, he thinks he distributed about 1,000 meals to old people's homes. That is the other side to the defendant to which I refer."
Rice, a 35-year-old from Mount Crescent in Kirkby, admitted to one charge of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation on the second day of the trial. Smith, a 38-year-old from Moss Lane in Ormskirk, also pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud by abuse of position and one count of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation.
James Johnson, residing at Westcombe Road in Anfield, admitted to conspiracy to commit fraud by abuse of position and one offence of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation. Judge Swinnerton was due to pass sentence on these defendants this afternoon, Friday, but this has been postponed to December 17 due to a lack of court time.
Louis James, from Lapford Crescent in Kirkby, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud by abuse of position and two counts of conspiracy to commit fraud by false representation before the trial, was not present in court today. The 37 year old will also be sentenced next month, with all defendants having been released on bail until this date.