In its first major attempt to crack down on the secondary ticket market, the Federal Trade Commission is suing two Pikesville men who they say have been illegally buying hundreds of thousands of tickets to concerts, plays and sporting events — including every stop of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour — to resell at a profit.

According to the complaint, Yair D. Rozmaryn, Elan N. Rozmaryn and a Massachusetts man used thousands of fictitious Ticketmaster accounts, thousands of virtual and traditional credit card numbers, and proxy or spoofed IP addresses to bypass security measures and other controls on Ticketmaster’s website, violating ticket purchase limits.

From Nov. 1, 2022, to Dec. 30, 2023, alone, the FTC said the men spent $57 million to gobble up at least 380,000 tickets to various events, a portion of which were sold on secondary marketplaces for $64 million — a significant markup.

For just one Taylor Swift concert in Las Vegas, the FTC said, the defendants allegedly used 49 different accounts to purchase 273 tickets, dramatically exceeding the Eras Tour’s six-ticket purchase limit per event and reselling them for $119,000 in profit. They made a total of $1.2 million reselling Eras Tour tickets overall, the FTC said.

“Today’s action puts brokers on notice that the Trump-Vance FTC will police operations that unlawfully circumvent ticket sellers’ purchase limits, ensuring that consumers have an opportunity to buy tickets at fair prices,” FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson said in a statement.

The Rozmaryns, whose company was formed in 2017, deny the allegations, even going so far as to file a preemptive lawsuit of their own in U.S. District Court last month.

They said they do not circumvent security measures or use “bots,” and that the FTC was seeking to ”destroy Plaintiffs’ legitimate business and, by extension, the entirety of the secondary-ticket market."

The men operate a company called Key Investment Group LLC, headquartered in Pikesville, which does business as Epic Seats, TotalTickets.com LLC and Totally Tix LLC.

“KIG is standing up for the consumers and a fair and free secondary market,” they said in an accompanying press release. “A well-regulated secondary ticket market empowers fans, increases access, allows open competition and free markets, and strengthens the live event economy.”

The FTC said the men are in violation of the Better Online Ticket Sales (BOTS) Act, passed in 2016. President Donald Trump issued an executive order in March directing the FTC to renew its efforts to enforce the BOTS Act.

In their lawsuit, the ticket sellers said the FTC had “made it clear” that they “intend to use the BOTS Act to shut down the entire secondary-ticket market, with Plaintiffs being the first in a long line of dominoes Defendants hope to tumble.”

“In attempting to misuse the BOTS Act to destroy Plaintiff’s legitimate business and, by extension, the entirety of the secondary-ticket market, Defendants’ actions run counter to both the BOTS Act and the FTC’s very purpose,” wrote Bezalel Stern, an attorney representing the ticket sellers.

The ticket sellers said they and their employees use a web browser called Insomniac, “often with many tabs open.” The browser allows each tab to have its own IP address.

“Ticket resellers throughout the industry routinely use the Insomniac browser for these purposes. Ticketmaster is well aware of this fact,“ they wrote. ”Often, Key Investment Group accounts will be under pseudonyms. This is common practice in the secondary ticket industry.”

“Using multiple accounts with distinct, readily-identifiable pseudonyms serves Key Investment Group’s legitimate business needs,” they said, adding that Ticketmaster “is and has been at all times aware” of Key’s strategy and has “both expressly and impliedly authorized KIG’s use of same.”

Ticketmaster could not immediately be reached for comment.