A mother-of-three who swindled Oasis fans out of around £4,000 by flogging fake tickets to the band’s reunion tour has been handed a 12 month community order and told to pay a fine of just £40.
Rosie Slater scammed fans by claiming she could bag VIP executive box seats for the band’s Wembley Stadium gigs last August.
The 33-year-old used her connections with ‘wealthy, rich and famous’ connections’ to dupe 11 people who lost an estimated total of £4,000, Staffordshire Police said.
Magistrates were told one man, who bought 15 tickets from her, set up two WhatsApp groups and invited friends he thought might want to buy some, the court heard.
In those groups, Slater offered a price of £130 per ticket, and some people sent her the money directly and booked non-refundable hotel rooms for the concert dates.
Mr Padley told the court: ‘It later came out the defendant was lying.’
Slater was arrested after customers reported her to police and was charged with multiple fraud offences.
Mr Padley said Slater stated in her police interview that she had ‘started with good intent then it escalated out of her control.’
Simon Leech, defending, told the court Slater had acted to pay off ‘normal household debts’ rather than to fund an extravagant lifestyle.
Some of the cash went on council tax payments, he said.
Slater, of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire, pleaded guilty to 11 counts of fraud by false representation in December.
That court hearing was told she offered the tickets for sale for the Wembley shows on 2 and 3 August because she wanted to be popular.
She will complete 30 rehabilitation activity requirement days as part of her sentence. As well as the community order and fine, the defendant was ordered to pay compensation of £776.98 to five of her victims, and £199 in costs and a victim surcharge.
North Staffordshire Justice Centre heard some of her victims have been able to get refunds.
Sentencing today, Sarah Preston, the Chair of the magistrates bench, told Slater that her financial situation had got ‘out of control’ adding, ‘You left a lot of people extremely upset and disappointed as a consequence of your actions.’
Speaking outside court, Detective Constable David Stubbs of the force’s investigation bureau, who investigated the case, said Slater ‘does have connections with some of our wealthy, rich and famous people and has been fortunate enough to previously attend concerts.
‘Due to this, she was able to convince her victims that she had credible access to both the tickets and the VIP box at Wembley Stadium. She absolutely did exploit her victims.’
DC Stubbs told LBC that Slater’s involvement in the WhatsApp chats ‘was nothing more than a ploy to further convince them of her credibility’.
DC Stubbs said Slater acted ‘purely out of greed, exploiting her connections for personal gain’ and used some victims to attract further victims by asking them to pass on her details.
The Oasis Live ’25 Tour saw the band play 41 shows across 17 cities worldwide, including 19 in the UK and Ireland.
In December, live entertainment data website Pollstar estimated that Oasis had achieved the second highest-grossing tour of the year, with worldwide ticket sales of £301.7m ($405.4m), just behind Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter tour on £303.3m ($407.6m).
More than 14m million people from 158 countries applied for tickets for the shows in Cardiff, Manchester, London, Edinburgh and Dublin, with just one in ten successful.
A Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) investigation was launched into the way Ticketmaster sold Oasis tickets in 2024.
The probe found Ticketmaster did not tell fans waiting in lengthy queues that standing tickets were being sold at two different prices, and that prices would jump as soon as the cheap tickets sold out.
Ticketmaster sold some ‘platinum’ tickets at almost two and a half times the price of standard tickets, without sufficient explanation that these offered no additional benefits in the same areas of the venue, the CMA said.
In response, the CMA said Ticketmaster must now tell fans 24 hours in advance if a tiered pricing system is being used – as it was for Oasis standing tickets.
