The Federal Trade Commission has settled with Georgia-based ticket broker Elite Events, trading as smartscalpers.com, over allegations it used overseas agents and proxy servers to buy up more than 100,000 concert tickets for artists including Tate McRae, Megan Moroney, Benson Boone and Metallica. The case, announced on 27 July, marks a renewed US crackdown on ticket touting under the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, a 2016 law that had gone largely unenforced until President Trump ordered the FTC to pursue resellers more aggressively last year.

The FTC accused Elite Events of hiring overseas "pullers" who used fake email addresses, virtual credit cards and proxy IP addresses to evade Ticketmaster and AXS purchase limits, amassing tickets to nearly 6,000 events since 2022 before reselling them at inflated prices via StubHub, Vivid Seats and SeatGeek. Alleged hauls included over 1,000 tickets for Boone's Fireworks and Rollerblades Tour, nearly 1,600 for Moroney's Am I Okay? Tour, almost 300 for a single Metallica show and more than 400 for one McRae concert. Although the settlement sets a penalty of $10.7 million, the FTC is allowing the company to pay just $300,000 owing to its limited finances; Elite Events admitted no wrongdoing, and the ruling follows separate 2025 BOTS Act actions against broker Key Investment Group and Ticketmaster itself.