Man gets 6 weeks' jail for pushing aside Taylor Swift ticket-holder to allow trio to gatecrash concert

SINGAPORE: A man who pushed aside a ticket-holding Taylor Swift concertgoer then held onto a turnstile to let three people without tickets into the venue was sentenced to six weeks' jail on Friday (March 22).

Li Xiaowei, a 45-year-old Chinese national, pleaded guilty to one charge of criminal trespass.

In sentencing, District Judge Hairul Hakkim Kuthibutheen referenced a song by the American singer-songwriter and emphasised that Li had made “unlawful contact with a legitimate concertgoer”.

“Foreshadowing Taylor Swift’s hit song I Knew You Were Trouble, (Li) entered the National Stadium with the intent of committing the offence,” the judge said.

WHAT HAPPENED 

Li arrived in Singapore on Feb 29, 2024 on a social visit pass, his first visit here. He had no air ticket out of Singapore.

On Mar 1, 2024, a group of three, Shangguan Linmo, 25, Hu Zhijun, 21 and Yang Junhao, 23, had departed from Wuhan to Penang for a holiday.

While on board one of their connecting flights, an unknown person on the flight had approached Ms Shangguan and asked if she was interested in buying three Singapore Eras Tour tickets for 4,000 yuan (about S$755) each. 

When she said she was interested, the unknown person told her he knew a contact in Singapore who could secure three VIP tickets that were “free seating in nature”, said Deputy Public Prosecutor Darren Ang. 

He also told the woman that if she was unable to enter the concert using those tickets, he would provide them with spare tickets and shared his WeChat contact and that of a 29-year-old male, Yang Chenguang.

Three days later, on Mar 4, the trio boarded a flight to Singapore, intending to attend the Singapore Eras Tour concert on the same evening. 

Sometime that evening, Li entered the person check security area that Taylor Swift concert goers were required to pass through for a bag check, before scanning their tickets at a turnstile leading into the National Stadium.

Yang Chenguang, whose case is still before the courts, also entered the security area and met up with the trio.

Court documents did not state the nature of the relationship between Li and Yang, or how they knew each other.

Yang instructed one of the trio to pay 12,000 yuan to an Alipay user “Xue Mei” for three tickets. Court documents stated that the amount was refunded the next day. 

Li and Yang met up outside Gate 3 and conversed, while the three people planning to attend the concert waited for around 10 minutes as they talked.

Yang then walked the area behind the crowded Gate 3 and looked towards the turnstile gates to identify an opportunity for the trio to tailgate a concert-goer into the stadium.

When he noticed there were no security officers stationed behind the three left-most turnstiles as there was a commotion in the vicinity of another gate, Yang brought Li’s attention to that turnstile.

Li then walked to that turnstile where two female concert goers were queuing to scan their tickets. 

At the same time, Yang allegedly squeezed through the queues and approached the only security officer stationed at that set of turnstile gates and distracted him. 

Li's role was to enable the trio to tailgate one of the concert goers with legitimate tickets into the stadium. He pushed aside one of the concertgoers during the period the security officer was distracted.

He then signalled to the trio to come toward him and held onto the turnstile to prevent it from rotating into a locked position, and pushed the trio through the turnstile. 

After the group entered the stadium, Yang and Li made to leave. The concertgoer who had been pushed repeatedly called the security guard's attention by shouting, “Excuse me!”.

Noticing this, Li pushed her on her back to try and get her through the turnstile but was unable to do so. He held onto her hands and shook them aggressively, asking her why she was shouting. 

The concertgoer who had passed through the turnstile before her noticed that Li was touching her, and asked him to stop, after which he walked away. 

She then told the security guard that three people had tailgated her into the stadium, and the security guard left to find the trio unsuccessfully.

The incident was caught on the closed-circuit television at the venue. Following a police report, the police were dispatched on the scene and Li and Yang were arrested.

During police investigations, two screenshots depicting Eras Tour tickets dated Mar 2 and Mar 4 were found on Li’s phone. 

The Mar 4 ticket was a false ticket that stated that date was a Saturday instead of a Monday and had an “uncharacteristically large” number 4, said Mr Ang.

He added that Li had no satisfactory explanation for why the two ticket screenshots were on his phone and Yang had sent Ms Shangguan an almost identical false ticket over WeChat on Mar 4.

This week, Yang was handed a fresh charge of cheating one of the alleged trespassers into believing he was purchasing genuine Eras Tours tickets. 

The pair were not the first to have been charged with helping people illegally enter the Taylor Swift concert venue, as 54-year-old Wu Zhihong was jailed for two weeks on Monday for a similar offence.

For committing criminal trespass, Li could have been jailed for up to three months, received a fine of up to S$1,500 or face both punishments. 

This article was originally published in TODAY.