Three people, including A (42), who used macros to reserve a large number of professional baseball tickets and resell them as scalped tickets, and B (26) and C (28), who created and distributed the macro programs, were arrested by police.
On the 21st, the Daejeon Metropolitan Police Agency's cyber investigation unit said it booked the three on charges including violations of the Act on Promotion of Information and Communications Network Utilization and Information Protection, the National Sports Promotion Act, and obstruction of business, and is investigating.
A is accused of using macros from March 2023 until being caught in on the 7th to make a total of 5,254 reservations for 10,881 professional baseball tickets and reselling them to earn about 570 million won. Of that, A's net profit came to about 312 million won.
According to police, the person sold first-base couple seats for the Hanwha Eagles and Kia Tigers game, which had a face value of about 40,000 won, for 400,000 won—10 times higher—and in some cases sold tickets for 10 to 15 times the price. On Mar. 22, the person sold 128 baseball game tickets in a single day and pocketed 15.27 million won.
A created numerous accounts under the names of the person, family members, and acquaintances and committed the crimes using macros at PC rooms across Seoul and Gyeonggi.
As professional baseball grew more popular and reservations using macros became harder, the person also joined paid team memberships that allow booking a day earlier. After accessing first, the person again used macro programs to secure seats to be scalped. It was also found the person used "direct link" URLs that connect straight to the seat selection window without a wait. Creating and distributing direct links, as well as using them to make reservations, are all illegal.
B and C are accused of offering a range of scalping macros from 40,000 won to premium versions priced at 120,000 won, taking in 86 million won. Beyond simple reservation functions, they developed and produced macro programs that added features such as automatic purchase of canceled tickets and compatibility with multiple reservation sites. They sold macro programs to a total of 973 people in 1,488 transactions.