New York
StubHub sued by fans who say ticket cancellations crushed their dreams of going to World Cup
NEW YORK (AP) — After weeks of complaints from frustrated fans, StubHub is being sued by customers who say the ticket reseller’s inability to fulfill orders crushed their dreams of going to World Cup.
Julia Reeker Moghal and Reuben Renteria, both of California, sued the ticketing giant this week in federal court in New York, alleging that “false and misleading” sales practices left them without the tickets they purchased for group stage matches last month.
The lawsuit, which seeks to become a class action, says Moghal and Renteria are among hundreds or even thousands of World Cup fans who purchased tickets only to find out that they “did not exist, were revoked without any forewarning, or had been erased” because of what the tournament’s organizer, FIFA, deemed “poor digital infrastructure.”
In addition to monetary damages, Moghal and Renteria are asking that StubHub be barred from selling World Cup tickets and that any profits from those sales be given to affected customers.
StubHub declined to comment on the lawsuit but said in a statement that its “singular goal is to get fans into events.”
If anything goes wrong, “our FanProtect Guarantee provides replacement tickets or a full refund,” the company said. “The World Cup is no different, and the issues fans have experienced are largely driven by problems with the event organizer’s own ticketing infrastructure.”
FIFA encourages fans to buy tickets through its own marketplace, where it adds a 30% surcharge to every resold ticket — 15% each from the buyer and seller.
In a statement, the organization said it “has no visibility over, or control of, secondary market ticket transactions carried out on third-party platforms” and “rejects any suggestion that the functional issues being experienced by users of third-party platforms” are the result of FIFA’s ticketing infrastructure.
For weeks, fans have been complaining on social media about tickets that never arrived from resellers, orders that were canceled at the last minute and hours they spent trying to sort out problems between FIFA’s ticketing system and outside resale platforms.
According to the lawsuit, Moghal paid $1,905 for three tickets to the June 18 Switzerland-Bosnia and Herzegovina match at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, but never received them and never got a refund, which would violate the company’s guarantee.
As the match approached, Moghal was given conflicting information about the status of her order, first receiving a notice that the tickets were ready, then learning that StubHub had canceled her order, then being misled into thinking her tickets would be delivered after all, the lawsuit said.
After the initial cancellation, Moghal spent hours on the phone with StubHub, which said the order would remain canceled but then reversed course and promised her that they would be delivered an hour before the match, the lawsuit said.
Moghal drove to the stadium and waited in line, but never received her tickets, the lawsuit said. She was then promised a refund but never got one, the lawsuit said.
Had she known “that StubHub was either unable to deliver or not authorized to deliver her World Cup Tickets to her, she never would have purchased them,” the lawsuit said.
Similarly, Renteria paid $2,294 for two tickets to the June 18 Mexico-South Korea match in Guadalajara, Mexico, but never received his tickets, the lawsuit said.
Like Moghal, Renteria received a notice that his tickets were ready, only to find that StubHub canceled the order, the lawsuit said. He was only refunded after “significant complaints to StubHub,” but had to eat the cost of traveling to Mexico, the lawsuit said.
Texas
Video in case against Pooh Shiesty shows him pressing for record label release, prosecutors say
DALLAS (AP) — Prosecutors say a video shows rapper Pooh Shiesty pressing for his release from fellow rapper Gucci Mane’s record label while an armed man blocks a door during an alleged robbery at a Texas music studio in January.
A court record shows the video was submitted as evidence in federal court in Dallas, where Pooh Shiesty and eight others have been indicted on kidnapping and extortion charges. Prosecutors say the victims were robbed at gunpoint after traveling to the city to discuss Pooh Shiesty’s recording contract with Mane’s 1017 Records.
The victims have only been referred to by their initials in court documents. One, R.D., is described as the owner of 1017 Records. Mane’s legal name is Radric Delantic Davis. The song “Crash Dummy,” which Gucci Mane released this spring, includes the lyrics: “I thought it was a business meeting, but it was a set up.”
The court document was filed by prosecutors in response to a motion Pooh Shiesty filed last month proposing home confinement, arguing that the evidence against him did not warrant keeping him in custody pending trial, as was ordered by a judge in April.
But prosecutors said in their filing that the motion from Pooh Shiesty, whose legal name is Lontrell Williams Jr., should be denied and that evidence against him was “extraordinarily strong.”
Prosecutors said they have the cooperation of all five victims and witnesses in the case and cellphone location data. There is also surveillance video placing the defendants at the scene, according to prosecutors, in addition to the video of the owner of 1017 Records being forced to declare that Pooh Shiesty was “dropped” from his label.
Prosecutors said in the filing that just before that video was made, Pooh Shiesty produced a printed contractual release for the record label owner to sign. The man initially refused but signed after Pooh Shiesty allegedly pointed an AK-style pistol his head.
Prosecutors also said BIG30, whose legal name is Rodney Wright, recorded the video with his cellphone while another defendant blocked the door holding a firearm that resembled an AK-47 style rifle.
According to prosecutors, Pooh Shiesty robbed the record label owner of about $450,000 worth of items including his wedding band, a watch, a pair of earrings and cash.
Prosecutors have said that at the time of the alleged confrontation, Pooh Shiesty was on home confinement for a prior firearms conspiracy conviction out of Florida and was required to wear an electronic monitoring device.
Attorneys for Pooh Shiesty and BIG30 did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment Thursday.
Gucci Mane is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of trap music alongside fellow Atlanta rappers T.I. and Jeezy. He emerged in the mid-2000s with his breakout single “Icy” and went on to build a vast catalog.
Louisiana
State’s top court halts the criminal case against state attorney general
The Louisiana Supreme Court on Friday halted the criminal case against state Attorney General Liz Murrill a day after she was indicted on accusations that she threatened the jobs of officials in New Orleans.
The state’s top court said the local court and special prosecutor in the case did not follow proper procedures in the process surrounding the indictment — including multiple local media reports that the court handcuffed and locked out a journalist attempting to report on the grand jury action.
Friday’s stay puts the case on hold, at least for now. Murrill, a Republican, said she intends to ask a court to dismiss the case, which shows a deep rift between Republican state officials and the Democrats who control the state’s most populous city.
“I hope this political witch hunt is not a harbinger of things to come,” she said in a statement Friday, “but I fear that it is.”
The 16-count indictment handed up Thursday by a New Orleans grand jury accused Murrill, the state’s first female attorney general, with intimidation and malfeasance.
The Supreme Court says there were deep flaws with the charges.
“This indictment appears to turn the law on its head and flows from what appear to be extraordinary procedural defects and improprieties,” the court said in a filing signed by Justice Jay McCallum, a Republican.
The court says there are likely conflicts of interest involving Laurie White, the special prosecutor and former state judge who brought the charges, including that she’s being defended by the attorney general’s office against a sexual harassment lawsuit.
McCallum’s explanation also notes that the law used in the intimidation charge against Murrill requires that threats be “unlawful or include a threat of bodily harm or death.”
The court also found the attorney general is likely to succeed in having the case dismissed and that she would suffer irreparable harm if it can move forward.
The order was issued by all four of the Republican justices and one Democrat. The court’s other Democrat and an independent dissented. Justice John Guidry, a Democrat, was critical of the quick decision by his colleagues. “Due process and equal protection under the law does not allow anyone to cut the line and have their matters considered more preferentially than others,” he wrote.
The case is fallout from a major political battle in Louisiana.
The state this year abolished the job of the New Orleans criminal court clerk — merging it with another court clerk position. That action came months after Calvin Duncan, who spent decades in prison before his murder conviction was vacated, was elected to the criminal clerk office.
Murrill and other GOP officials have refused to acknowledge Duncan’s innocence, though he’s listed on the National Registry of Exonerations.
The court noted that Duncan was previously represented by White — which it called “a likely conflict of interest.”
A letter from Murrill to New Orleans’ city council members and Mayor Helena Moreno came after the city council set a special election that would have given Duncan a shot at the combined clerk role. Murrill told officials they could lose their offices for violating state laws that forbid support for an unauthorized officeholder.
Murrill has said she was doing her job.
After the indictment was issued Thursday, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, said he would pardon Murrill. The governor also said on social media that he was ordering state police to investigate “the alleged improprieties of this grand jury and those who ran it.”
On Friday, the governor thanked the Supreme Court and called the indictment “a political witch hunt” against Murrill.
StubHub sued by fans who say ticket cancellations crushed their dreams of going to World Cup
NEW YORK (AP) — After weeks of complaints from frustrated fans, StubHub is being sued by customers who say the ticket reseller’s inability to fulfill orders crushed their dreams of going to World Cup.
Julia Reeker Moghal and Reuben Renteria, both of California, sued the ticketing giant this week in federal court in New York, alleging that “false and misleading” sales practices left them without the tickets they purchased for group stage matches last month.
The lawsuit, which seeks to become a class action, says Moghal and Renteria are among hundreds or even thousands of World Cup fans who purchased tickets only to find out that they “did not exist, were revoked without any forewarning, or had been erased” because of what the tournament’s organizer, FIFA, deemed “poor digital infrastructure.”
In addition to monetary damages, Moghal and Renteria are asking that StubHub be barred from selling World Cup tickets and that any profits from those sales be given to affected customers.
StubHub declined to comment on the lawsuit but said in a statement that its “singular goal is to get fans into events.”
If anything goes wrong, “our FanProtect Guarantee provides replacement tickets or a full refund,” the company said. “The World Cup is no different, and the issues fans have experienced are largely driven by problems with the event organizer’s own ticketing infrastructure.”
FIFA encourages fans to buy tickets through its own marketplace, where it adds a 30% surcharge to every resold ticket — 15% each from the buyer and seller.
In a statement, the organization said it “has no visibility over, or control of, secondary market ticket transactions carried out on third-party platforms” and “rejects any suggestion that the functional issues being experienced by users of third-party platforms” are the result of FIFA’s ticketing infrastructure.
For weeks, fans have been complaining on social media about tickets that never arrived from resellers, orders that were canceled at the last minute and hours they spent trying to sort out problems between FIFA’s ticketing system and outside resale platforms.
According to the lawsuit, Moghal paid $1,905 for three tickets to the June 18 Switzerland-Bosnia and Herzegovina match at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, but never received them and never got a refund, which would violate the company’s guarantee.
As the match approached, Moghal was given conflicting information about the status of her order, first receiving a notice that the tickets were ready, then learning that StubHub had canceled her order, then being misled into thinking her tickets would be delivered after all, the lawsuit said.
After the initial cancellation, Moghal spent hours on the phone with StubHub, which said the order would remain canceled but then reversed course and promised her that they would be delivered an hour before the match, the lawsuit said.
Moghal drove to the stadium and waited in line, but never received her tickets, the lawsuit said. She was then promised a refund but never got one, the lawsuit said.
Had she known “that StubHub was either unable to deliver or not authorized to deliver her World Cup Tickets to her, she never would have purchased them,” the lawsuit said.
Similarly, Renteria paid $2,294 for two tickets to the June 18 Mexico-South Korea match in Guadalajara, Mexico, but never received his tickets, the lawsuit said.
Like Moghal, Renteria received a notice that his tickets were ready, only to find that StubHub canceled the order, the lawsuit said. He was only refunded after “significant complaints to StubHub,” but had to eat the cost of traveling to Mexico, the lawsuit said.
Texas
Video in case against Pooh Shiesty shows him pressing for record label release, prosecutors say
DALLAS (AP) — Prosecutors say a video shows rapper Pooh Shiesty pressing for his release from fellow rapper Gucci Mane’s record label while an armed man blocks a door during an alleged robbery at a Texas music studio in January.
A court record shows the video was submitted as evidence in federal court in Dallas, where Pooh Shiesty and eight others have been indicted on kidnapping and extortion charges. Prosecutors say the victims were robbed at gunpoint after traveling to the city to discuss Pooh Shiesty’s recording contract with Mane’s 1017 Records.
The victims have only been referred to by their initials in court documents. One, R.D., is described as the owner of 1017 Records. Mane’s legal name is Radric Delantic Davis. The song “Crash Dummy,” which Gucci Mane released this spring, includes the lyrics: “I thought it was a business meeting, but it was a set up.”
The court document was filed by prosecutors in response to a motion Pooh Shiesty filed last month proposing home confinement, arguing that the evidence against him did not warrant keeping him in custody pending trial, as was ordered by a judge in April.
But prosecutors said in their filing that the motion from Pooh Shiesty, whose legal name is Lontrell Williams Jr., should be denied and that evidence against him was “extraordinarily strong.”
Prosecutors said they have the cooperation of all five victims and witnesses in the case and cellphone location data. There is also surveillance video placing the defendants at the scene, according to prosecutors, in addition to the video of the owner of 1017 Records being forced to declare that Pooh Shiesty was “dropped” from his label.
Prosecutors said in the filing that just before that video was made, Pooh Shiesty produced a printed contractual release for the record label owner to sign. The man initially refused but signed after Pooh Shiesty allegedly pointed an AK-style pistol his head.
Prosecutors also said BIG30, whose legal name is Rodney Wright, recorded the video with his cellphone while another defendant blocked the door holding a firearm that resembled an AK-47 style rifle.
According to prosecutors, Pooh Shiesty robbed the record label owner of about $450,000 worth of items including his wedding band, a watch, a pair of earrings and cash.
Prosecutors have said that at the time of the alleged confrontation, Pooh Shiesty was on home confinement for a prior firearms conspiracy conviction out of Florida and was required to wear an electronic monitoring device.
Attorneys for Pooh Shiesty and BIG30 did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment Thursday.
Gucci Mane is widely regarded as one of the pioneers of trap music alongside fellow Atlanta rappers T.I. and Jeezy. He emerged in the mid-2000s with his breakout single “Icy” and went on to build a vast catalog.
Louisiana
State’s top court halts the criminal case against state attorney general
The Louisiana Supreme Court on Friday halted the criminal case against state Attorney General Liz Murrill a day after she was indicted on accusations that she threatened the jobs of officials in New Orleans.
The state’s top court said the local court and special prosecutor in the case did not follow proper procedures in the process surrounding the indictment — including multiple local media reports that the court handcuffed and locked out a journalist attempting to report on the grand jury action.
Friday’s stay puts the case on hold, at least for now. Murrill, a Republican, said she intends to ask a court to dismiss the case, which shows a deep rift between Republican state officials and the Democrats who control the state’s most populous city.
“I hope this political witch hunt is not a harbinger of things to come,” she said in a statement Friday, “but I fear that it is.”
The 16-count indictment handed up Thursday by a New Orleans grand jury accused Murrill, the state’s first female attorney general, with intimidation and malfeasance.
The Supreme Court says there were deep flaws with the charges.
“This indictment appears to turn the law on its head and flows from what appear to be extraordinary procedural defects and improprieties,” the court said in a filing signed by Justice Jay McCallum, a Republican.
The court says there are likely conflicts of interest involving Laurie White, the special prosecutor and former state judge who brought the charges, including that she’s being defended by the attorney general’s office against a sexual harassment lawsuit.
McCallum’s explanation also notes that the law used in the intimidation charge against Murrill requires that threats be “unlawful or include a threat of bodily harm or death.”
The court also found the attorney general is likely to succeed in having the case dismissed and that she would suffer irreparable harm if it can move forward.
The order was issued by all four of the Republican justices and one Democrat. The court’s other Democrat and an independent dissented. Justice John Guidry, a Democrat, was critical of the quick decision by his colleagues. “Due process and equal protection under the law does not allow anyone to cut the line and have their matters considered more preferentially than others,” he wrote.
The case is fallout from a major political battle in Louisiana.
The state this year abolished the job of the New Orleans criminal court clerk — merging it with another court clerk position. That action came months after Calvin Duncan, who spent decades in prison before his murder conviction was vacated, was elected to the criminal clerk office.
Murrill and other GOP officials have refused to acknowledge Duncan’s innocence, though he’s listed on the National Registry of Exonerations.
The court noted that Duncan was previously represented by White — which it called “a likely conflict of interest.”
A letter from Murrill to New Orleans’ city council members and Mayor Helena Moreno came after the city council set a special election that would have given Duncan a shot at the combined clerk role. Murrill told officials they could lose their offices for violating state laws that forbid support for an unauthorized officeholder.
Murrill has said she was doing her job.
After the indictment was issued Thursday, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, said he would pardon Murrill. The governor also said on social media that he was ordering state police to investigate “the alleged improprieties of this grand jury and those who ran it.”
On Friday, the governor thanked the Supreme Court and called the indictment “a political witch hunt” against Murrill.
