Alfred Branch Jr. from Ticketnews.com is reporting:

As more details emerge from the lawsuit filed by ticket broker Chuck Lombardo against Ticketmaster, the picture being painted is one of a company that has continually tried to quietly muscle its way into the secondary ticket market and allegedly manipulate ticket prices for certain artists. The lawsuit was first reported by TicketNews last week; click here to view a copy of the lawsuit.

While their names are not specifically on the lawsuit, former Ticketmaster President and CEO Sean Moriarty, and current CEO Irving Azoff, owner of Front Line Management, figure prominently in the case because Lombardo allegedly either negotiated directly with them or with other executives on their behalf.

In October 2007, a year before he signed an employment agreement with Ticketmaster, Lombardo and the company allegedly agreed that Lombardo and his employees "would advise, consult and assist Ticketmaster" with its secondary ticketing efforts on "an individual project-by-project basis in exchange for a flat fee and/or percentage per project." The amount of the fee was not disclosed. Lombardo founded his company, Elite Entertainment Inc., in 1995, but he's been involved in the secondary ticket business for more than 23 years.

Besides consulting, Lombardo and Elite sold tickets on the secondary market, on Ticketmaster's behalf, for several high-profile tours as an exercise in how to price tickets. The tours included Van Halen, Def Leppard, Kanye West, Neil Diamond and New Kids on the Block, and the tickets were sold on TicketExchange, TicketsNow and TicketNews's parent company TicketNetwork.

Read more here.