JUSTICE: Family Sentenced In Masters Ticket Scheme

If you’ve ever attempted to buy tickets to see the Masters live at Augusta National, you know how difficult it is to land them. But one family was able to cheat the system for years, and now they’re finally paying the price.

For those not familiar, Augusta National gives out its tickets through a lottery system. Basically, you sign up yourself for the lottery with your name, email, and physical address and then you wait to see if your name has been pulled. If it is, you get the opportunity to purchase passes to the Masters. It’s hard to cheat this system but that is exactly what the Freeman family did for several years.

Back in 2019, members of the Freeman family of Texas were arrested for running a cash making scheme involving tickets to the Masters. In their scheme, the family would buy a bulk address list online and use the information to create accounts to be put in the Masters ticket lottery. They would then purchase tickets with the winning accounts and use fake IDs to change the mailing address for the tickets to their own. That allowed the family the resell the tickets for a massive profit.

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According to the FBI, the Freeman family was able to run this scheme for just about five years without being caught. Originally, the FBI was contacted by Augusta National back in 2017 to report suspicious activity in their lottery system. And after some more time of the investigation, the FBI was led to the Freeman’s and busted their scheme. Everyone involved pled guilty to manipulating the lottery.

On Monday, the Freeman’s were finally sentenced for their crime. Michael Freeman, the ring leader of the operation, was sentenced to 28 months in prison, as well as three years of supervised release once his original sentence is over. Freeman’s parents and sister also pled guilty and received probation. The family was also ordered to pay $275,000 in public restitution.

Overall, this is a good resolution for Augusta and fans, as the stiff penalty will likely discourage others from trying to pull the same stunt with other golf events. And with the Freeman scheme out of the way, hopefully, some more deserving fans will have a chance to attend Augusta again when fans are allowed back on the course.

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