Trial will start Friday for ticket broker accused of scamming Sox out of $1 million

A Chicago White Sox program that made up for "bad weather" games by letting fans redeem tickets for another trip to the ballpark "opened the door" in 2017 to a ticket broker already suspected of scamming the South Siders, a Sox employee would later tell the FBI.

The team had no way of keeping track of how many tickets were being handed out under that program, the employee explained. So, he said, it became a key part of the scam that wound up costing the team around $1 million, court records show.

But the Sox did eventually catch on. And Friday, broker Bruce Lee is set to go to trial for wire fraud and money laundering. A 20-page indictment filed in January 2020 alleged Lee, who is from Chicago, made $868,369 by selling 34,876 fraudulently obtained tickets during the 2016 through 2019 seasons.

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