ULSAN — A ticket scalper in his 30s who used self-built macro software to snap up tickets to popular idol concerts and resell them for up to 13 times their face value, earning hundreds of millions of won, has been arrested and referred to prosecutors, police said.
The Ulsan Metropolitan Police Agency's cyber investigation unit said on the 26th that it had detained and referred a 35-year-old man, identified only as A, on charges of obstruction of business under the Criminal Act and violations of the Performance Act and the Network Act.
From November 2024 to October 2025, A bought large volumes of tickets to popular idol concerts on three major domestic booking sites using 1,198 accounts registered under foreign nationals' names. He is accused of illegally reselling them on secondhand trading sites for three to as much as 13 times face value, at prices of up to 2.73 million won ($1,970) per ticket.
Investigators found that A drew on his own computer expertise to build the macro program he used in the scheme. The program neutralized the booking sites' anti-fraud verification system, known as CAPTCHA, and automated the process through the card payment stage, buying 70 to 80 tickets at once in just one minute. It was also designed to post listings on secondhand trading sites in rapid succession, seconds apart.
Over about a year, A illegally distributed some 1,700 scalped tickets. His net profit, excluding the original ticket costs, was confirmed at about 420 million won ($303,000).
Police identified and arrested A after analyzing booking and sales records and conducting cooperative investigations overseas. In a search of A's home, they seized about 200 million won in cash stored in a safe and filed for pre-indictment provisional attachment of the entire 420 million won in criminal proceeds. Luxury watches, jewelry and expensive shoes were found at A's home, and A was confirmed to have driven an imported sports car.
While analyzing the flow of the criminal proceeds, police detected signs that large sums had been repeatedly deposited to a particular individual and are expanding the investigation to determine whether an accomplice was involved.
During the investigation, police confirmed that the macro program had automatically processed approval even at the credit card payment stage, and they also pursued institutional improvements, including asking the relevant card companies to strengthen their automatic payment procedures.
An official at the Ulsan Metropolitan Police Agency said that ticket scalping using macros is "a serious crime that harms people's livelihoods, undermining fairness in the market and creating cultural inequality." The official added, "With a revised Performance Act taking effect on August 28 that bans the illegal resale of tickets entirely, regardless of whether macros are used, we will further strengthen our crackdown on online scalping."
