With the Opening Ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing only days away, reports have surfaced of massive amounts of online ticket fraud that has left dozens of Americans and others stuck in China without tickets to the events.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC), U.S. Olympic Committee and other officials, including the Attorney General in Texas, are working feverishly to weed out scammers who are erroneously listing Olympic tickets. One of the companies in the crosshairs is Ticket City in Texas, which is being investigated by the state's Attorney General Greg Abbott, according to KXAN-TV, for allegedly reselling tickets it didn't have. The company is still listing tickets on its Web site.
Two U.S.-based Web sties that allegedly scammed customers, BeijingTicketing and Beijing-Tickets2008, were shut down after Olympic officials obtained an injunction in federal court. Dozens of other fraudulent Web sites have been traced back to a UK company, Xclusive Leisure and Hospitality, which also had a U.S. address and allegedly has a history of online ticket scams.
Ticketing has been an issue for the 2008 Games, which saw its servers crash under heightened demand for tickets.
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