These touts made millions - and claimed staff at big ticketing firms helped

Peter Hunter and Maria Chenery-Woods were convicted of fraud last year .

They used all of the four big UK ticket resale sites StubHub , Viagogo and the Ticketmaster-owned GetMeIn! and Seatwave.

A judge dismissed appeal by Hunter and his husband and accomplice David Smith against their landmark conviction for fraud.

He said evidence suggested possibility of "connivance and collusion" between ticketing companies and touts.

Former staff at resale websites which Ticketmaster used to own told us they worked closely with touts, court documents show.

Touts were "working hand-in-hand with resale platforms", a former employee tells the BBC .

Touts who consistently delivered large volumes of tickets to customers were offered discounts by resale sites.

Peter Hunter's company received sales revenue of 26.4 m over seven-and-a-half years .

Some staff at Ticketmaster-owned Seatwave had a cosy relationship with touts.

Ticketmaster and its resale sites used "a lot of the same infrastructure" and it would have been easy to "link everything together" Ticketmaster could have found out who was buying tickets in bulk and putting them up for resale on Ticketmaster 's other platforms.