Former White Sox Employees Charged in Alleged $1M Ticket Fraud Scheme

Three men have been charged in an alleged scheme to fraudulently sell more than 34,000 Chicago White Sox tickets from 2016 through 2019.

An FBI indictment released Friday alleges two former White Sox employees who worked in the ticket office, James Costello and William O'Neil, conspired with local ticket broker Bruce Lee to defraud the franchise of nearly $1 million, per Jon Seidel of the Chicago Sun-Times.

Lee has been charged with 11 counts of wire fraud and two counts of money laundering, while Costello faces his own charge of wire fraud. O'Neil has been charged with lying to the FBI.

Costello and O'Neil allegedly generated complimentary and discount tickets to Sox games and then sold them to Lee.

According to the indictment, Lee listed the tickets below face value on StubHub, selling 6,323 tickets in 2016, 17,408 in 2017, 11,115 in 2018 and 30 in 2019 before getting caught. More than 95 percent of the tickets sold were vouchers earmarked for youth groups, corporate sponsors and friends and family of players.

The White Sox contacted the FBI in October 2018 after their data analytics team flagged Lee as having sold substantially more Sox tickets than anyone else on StubHub, per Seidel, citing court records. In 2018, for example, Lee sold over 10,000 more tickets than the three next highest sellers combined.

Among the games noted in the affidavit, Lee allegedly sold 500 tickets to Michael Kopech's first start with the Sox in 2018, which team officials said could not have happened without employee assistance.

From 2016 to 2018, the White Sox never finished higher than 25th in MLB's attendance rankings, averaging fewer than 22,000 fans per game each season.