Former math teacher gets two years for $71 million ticket scam in US

A former math teacher was sentenced to more than two years in prison for fleecing investors of $71 million through a Ponzi scheme disguised as an operation to buy and sell tickets to high-profile concerts, musicals and sporting events.

Jason Nissen, 47, got money from investors he said would be used to purchase and resell tickets to popular events -- such as the Super Bowl and the hit Broadway musical “Hamilton” -- and instead used it to repay earlier investors, according to prosecutors. He pleaded guilty to a single count of wire fraud in March 2018.

On Friday, US District Judge Paul Engelmeyer in Manhattan sentenced Nissen to 27 months in prison, well below the eight to 10 years called for by federal guidelines. While the judge said Nissen had “perpetrated a fraud on a massive scale,” lying to investors and fabricating documents to keep the scheme going, he noted that the ex-teacher had no criminal record, a history of community involvement, two young children and a wife.

The judge also pointed out that Nissen undertook the fraud as part of an attempt to save his business and that he contacted his victims and reported his crime to prosecutors before they approached him.

“I have found your case to be a particularly difficult and tragic one,” Engelmeyer said.

The case emerged amid a crackdown by federal prosecutors on misconduct in the largely unregulated $15 billion ticket-resale industry, where middlemen purchase blocks of tickets and resell them at inflated prices. The highest-profile person targeted in the effort, sports radio jock Craig Carton, was convicted in November and was sentenced in April to 3 1/2 years in prison.

Nissen, the former chief executive officer of National Event Co., started the ticket-resale business in 2012 and began the fraud three years later, according to court filings. The company has filed for bankruptcy protection from creditors. Nissen is a former math teacher in Queens, New York, who was fired in 2004 after being caught reselling Dave Matthews Band tickets to his students for a profit, according to the New York City Department of Education.

Prosecutors had asked Engelmeyer to hand down a punishment within the range called for by sentencing guidelines, saying the “massive scale of the losses” caused by his activity is “extremely serious” and that his crimes involved a “concerted, calculated and sustained effort” to lie to investors, and that he created fake records and documents in support of the scam.

“The defendant’s serious and exploitative criminal conduct cries out for severe punishment to promote respect for the law and to provide just punishment for his offenses,” prosecutors said in a sentencing memo. “He engaged in this scheme without regard to the devastating effect his crime had on his victims.”

Nissen’s lawyer, Michael Bachner, said his client realized that he was going to face time in prison but urged the judge to keep the sentence as short as possible, noting that he fully cooperated with prosecutors and pleaded guilty. Bachner said Nissen put his entire life savings into his company, took no salary and was only trying to keep his business afloat rather than file for bankruptcy.

“Mr. Nissen understands that his conduct was fundamentally wrong,” Bachner said. “He feels horrible for what he has done.”

A tearful Nissen, his voice trembling at times, apologized to his victims and his friends and family, including his two young children and his wife, who was seated in the front row behind him and is eight months pregnant.

“Somehow I lost my way in trying to keep my company afloat,” Nissen said. “I always believed things would work out.”

The case is US v. Nissen, 17-cr-477, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

(The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text, only the headline has been changed.)