EBay's Ticket Unit Hacked; Arrest Announcements Pending

About 1,000 customers of EBay Inc.'s

StubHub ticket sales unit saw their accounts hacked by international fraudsters who then made unauthorized purchases. Arrests in the U.S. Canada and Great Britain are to be announced later Wednesday, according to both Reuters and the Associated Press. Arrests were reportedly coordinated by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the City of London Police and the U.S. Secret Service. Law enforcement agencies and StubHub have been working on the case for a year, StubHub's communications chief Glenn Lehrman, told Reuters. Lehrman said StubHub security wasn't breached but that hackers obtained passwords from other Web sites. Customer refunds have been issued, but Lehrman declined to put a price tag on the fraudulent purchases nor say how many people were arrested. Parent company eBay was the victim of a major hacking episode in May which Chief FInancial Officer Robert Swan has said had an “immediate and dramatic” impact on sales volume. In December, Target Corp.

hackers stole credit and debit card data from 40 million customer accounts.