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    Hackers Stole $635,000 in Taylor Swift Ticket Scheme, Queens D.A. Says

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    Two people stand accused of taking hundreds of tickets from StubHub to redirect them to others who resold them, prosecutors said.Two people accused of stealing and reselling more than 900 tickets to the Taylor Swift Eras Tour and other marquee events are facing criminal charges for their role in the scheme, New York prosecutors said.Several people were involved in hacking into the computer system of the online ticket-sales platform StubHub starting in the summer of 2022, the Queens district attorney, Melinda Katz, said in a news release on Monday. They then resold the tickets on the same platform for a profit, which added up to $635,000.Tyrone Rose, 20, of Kingston, Jamaica, and Shamara P. Simmons, 31, of the New York City neighborhood of Jamaica, Queens, were arrested and arraigned on Feb. 27 in Criminal Court in Queens. The lawyers listed for them in court documents did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Mr. Rose and Ms. Simmons were both charged with second-degree grand larceny, first-degree computer tampering, fourth-degree conspiracy and fourth-degree computer tampering.Mr. Rose worked for an outsourcing company in Kingston, Sutherland Global Services, which was contracted by StubHub, according to the criminal complaint.Mr. Rose and a co-worker, who has not been arrested or publicly identified, used their access to part of StubHub’s ticketing system to find a way into a secure part of the network that they were not authorized to use, where information about ticket orders was stored.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Music

      The Violinist Christian Tetzlaff’s Tactic to Oppose Trump’s Agenda: Cancel Concerts

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      Christian Tetzlaff said he was disturbed by the president’s embrace of Russia and other policies. “There seems to be a quietness or denial about what’s going on,” he said.When the German violinist Christian Tetzlaff returned home to Berlin after a recent performance in Chicago, he was distraught. The concert had gone well, but he was increasingly disturbed by political developments in the United States: President Trump’s embrace of Russia, the dizzying cuts to the federal work force and changes in policies affecting transgender Americans.“I felt like a child watching a horror film,” he said in an interview.On Friday, Mr. Tetzlaff, 58, a renowned violinist who frequently performs in the United States, said that he was canceling an eight-city tour of the country with his quartet this spring — including a stop at Carnegie Hall — and that he was unlikely to perform again in America unless the government reversed course.“There seems to be a quietness or denial about what’s going on,” he said. “I feel utter anger. I cannot go on with this feeling inside. I cannot just go and play a tour of beautiful concerts.”Harrison W. Fields, a White House spokesman, offered a two-word response to Mr. Tetzlaff’s cancellation: “America first.”Mr. Tetzlaff is one of the first major foreign artists to try to use a cultural boycott to influence Mr. Trump’s policies during his second term.For decades, American artists have canceled tours as a means of protesting war, autocracy, injustice and discrimination abroad. There were cultural boycotts of South Africa in the 1970s and 1980s in protest of its policy of apartheid, and more recently, artists have refused to perform in Russia since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in Music

      YoungBoy Never Broke Again Sentenced to 23 Months in Prison For Gun Possession

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      The rapper, whose real name is Kentrell Gaulden, admitted to possessing guns as a felon in Louisiana. He faced a maximum sentence of 25 years.YoungBoy Never Broke Again, one of the most-streamed hip-hop artists in the United States, has been sentenced to nearly two years in prison by a federal judge in Utah for possessing weapons as a felon.The rapper, whose real name is Kentrell D. Gaulden, was sentenced on Tuesday to 23 months in prison on gun charges related to a case in Louisiana. Mr. Gaulden, 25, was also sentenced to five years of probation and fined $200,000 for a gun charge in a separate Utah case.Federal law bars gun ownership by felons. In 2017, Mr. Gaulden was convicted of aggravated assault with a firearm, a felony, in a Louisiana court. Details of that case could not be independently confirmed early Wednesday.In a plea agreement filed in the United States District Court in Salt Lake City on Tuesday, Mr. Gaulden said that he had been in possession of three guns since his earlier felony conviction.In the first instance, Mr. Gaulden admitted to possessing two guns while filming a music video in Baton Rouge, La., in September 2020. In the second, a semiautomatic pistol was found in the master bedroom of his Utah home during a search, according to the plea agreement.He faced a maximum prison sentence of 10 years in the Louisiana case and 15 years in the Utah case.“This has been a long road that involved extensive litigation and ultimately extensive negotiation,” Mr. Gaulden’s lawyers said in a statement on Wednesday night. “Kentrell’s defense team is very happy for Kentrell and we look forward to his many future successes.”Mr. Gaulden, who is best known as NBA YoungBoy, has legions of dedicated fans. Many of his songs receive hundreds of millions of streams on Spotify and YouTube.But he has a history of legal problems.In 2022, Mr. Gaulden was found not guilty in a similar gun possession case in California. Police in the Los Angeles area had found a pistol and ammunition in the car he was driving. His lawyers argued that he did not know that the weapon was in the car at the time, and that his fingerprints were not found on the gun. More

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      in Television

      Chuck Scarborough to Step Down as WNBC News Anchor After 50-Year Career

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      The celebrated broadcaster, who started at the New York station in 1974, announced that he would wrap up his anchoring career on Dec. 12.Chuck Scarborough, the broadcaster who for 50 years brought New Yorkers news of blizzards, financial collapses, terror attacks and assassinations, said Thursday that he would step down from his anchoring duties at WNBC.“The time has come to pass the torch,” Mr. Scarborough said at the end of the 6 p.m. newscast. “Fifty years, eight months and 17 days after I walked into the door here at the headquarters of the National Broadcasting Company, I will step away from this anchor desk.”Mr. Scarborough, 81, said his last broadcast as anchor will be on Dec. 12. He will not leave WNBC entirely, and will contribute periodically to special projects, NBC 4 New York said in a statement.Beginning with “Good evening, I’m Chuck Scarborough,” Mr. Scarborough became an institution in New York over the decades he delivered the news about everything from storms and financial crises to protests and plane crashes. He announced the shooting of John Lennon in 1980, helmed newscasts in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks and won praise with his team for its coverage of the Covid pandemic.Mr. Scarborough anchored WNBC’s 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. weekday news shows for more than 40 years. In 2016, he stepped down from the late broadcast and continued as the co-anchor at 6 p.m. The station said his replacement will be announced later.“Chuck Scarborough is the gold standard in American broadcast journalism,” Eric Lerner, the president and general manager of NBC 4 New York, said in a statement.A native of Pittsburgh, Mr. Scarborough was in the U.S. Air Force for four years before he set off on a career in journalism. He received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Southern Mississippi, and served as an anchor at two stations in the state.That was followed by anchoring jobs in Atlanta and Boston before Mr. Scarborough landed at WNBC in 1974.When he marked his half-century as an anchor in New York in March, Mr. Scarborough hailed what he described as the city’s resilience.“Each time it was knocked down, people were saying, ‘That’s it, New York can’t possibly survive,’” he told The New York Times. “And each time, we would recover.” More

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      in Theater

      The Nation’s Politics Are Dramatic. Now Its Dramas Are Political.

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      For the second year in a row, a play about the Constitution is the most-staged in America. And a farce about a terrible president is also pretty popular.The United States is in the final stages of a dramatic election year, with an unexpected change of candidates, two assassination attempts, and a remarkably close contest. Now it turns out that many of the nation’s theaters are leaning into the politics of the moment, programming shows that explore, or mock, the state of affairs.For the second year in a row, the most-staged play in America will be “What the Constitution Means to Me,” Heidi Schreck’s look at this country’s fundamental legal document, seen through the lens of gender and autobiography. Further down the list: “POTUS,” Selina Fillinger’s farce about a group of women caught up in a male president’s scandals.An annual survey by American Theater magazine finds that there will be 16 productions this year of “What the Constitution Means to Me,” which ran on Broadway in 2019. There will be 14 productions each of “Fat Ham,” James Ijames’s Pulitzer-winning riff on “Hamlet,” and “King James,” Rajiv Joseph’s buddy drama about two LeBron James fans. And not far behind, with 13: “Primary Trust,” Eboni Booth’s Pulitzer-winning play about loneliness, kindness, and a man who loves mai tais.The survey found 11 local productions of “POTUS,” and of the musicals “Jersey Boys” and “Waitress.”The most-produced playwrights around the country will be Joseph, whose “Guards at the Taj” is also popular, and Kate Hamill, who has written adaptations of works including “Pride and Prejudice” and “Sense and Sensibility.” (The survey does not include work by Shakespeare, or productions and adaptations of “A Christmas Carol,” because those would swamp the list each year.)One striking result of the magazine’s survey: The overall number of shows being staged at nonprofits that are members of the trade organization Theater Communications Group (which publishes American Theater magazine) is continuing to fall, as cash-strapped regional theaters cut back productions to try to control costs. The survey found 1,281 productions planned this season, down from 1,560 in last year’s survey, and 2,229 in the 2019 survey, before the pandemic, according to Rob Weinert-Kendt, the magazine’s editor in chief. More

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      in Music

      Paul Sperry, Tenor Who Specialized in American Song, Dies at 90

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      He carved out a niche by singing songs by living composers from his own country, and was praised by critics at home and abroad.Paul Sperry, a tenor who championed little-known American art song and spiky contemporary works, and was praised for his incisive performances of the classics, died on June 13 in Manhattan. He was 90.His death, in a hospital, was caused by heart failure, his son Ethan said.In a discipline where his peers tended to stick to tried-and-true German and French classics from the 19th and 20th centuries, Mr. Sperry carved out a niche, singing songs by living composers from his own country. But he also took on some of the most difficult late-20th-century Europeans, like Karlheinz Stockhausen and Hans Werner Henze, who had been shunned by many singers. That boldness earned him steady work, his son recalled.Mr. Sperry, a Harvard Business School graduate who eschewed a career in real estate and turned to singing, his first love, in his late 20s, was a low-key performer who consistently earned high marks from music critics over three decades. They cited his intelligent approach to song, his understanding of texts, and his imaginative programs.“Paul Sperry is a true connoisseur’s singer — he may not have the most glamorous tenor voice imaginable, but he does some wonderful things with it, and his programing is always interesting and exploratory,” the critic Peter G. Davis wrote in The New York Times in 1975 about a recital of lieder, including by little-known 18th century composers who preceded Schubert.Mr. Sperry in 1985. After graduating from Harvard Business School, he turned to singing, his first love.via Sperry familyWhen critics found fault with his voice — Mr. Sperry was most comfortable in deeper registers — they still praised the intellect and musicianship behind it.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More