‘Hamilton’ Ticket Ponzi Scheme Leads to Second Guilty Plea

A concert promoter admitted to his role in fleecing investors of more than $95 million in a Ponzi scheme where investors were told their funds were going to buy and resell blocks of tickets to popular concerts and musicals including the smash Broadway hit “Hamilton.”

Joseph Meli, 43, pleaded guilty Oct. 31 to one count of securities fraud in the ruse, which allegedly defrauded about 130 investors from 2015 to this year, prosecutors in New York said (United States v. Simmons, S.D.N.Y., No. 17-cr-00127, guilty plea 10/31/17).

Meli and another man, Steven Simmons, 48, of Wilton, Conn., were ...