Thousands of Counterfeit Olympic Tickets Sold on the Internet

Thousands of consumers have purchased counterfeit Olympic tickets on fake Olympic Internet sites. The International Olympic Committee announced that they were taking strong measures to end this criminal activity and that counterfeit tickets would not be replaced by real ones.

Some of the people conned by these websites include close relatives of Olympic competitors. It has been reported that counterfeit tickets have been bought by consumers from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Norway, Canada, the US, and Great Britain.

The International Olympic Committee submitted claims against six different internet sites in California and Arizona courts on Tuesday. Lawyers for the IOC have claimed that two sites, Beijing ticketing.com, and Beijing-2008tickets.com, illegally used the Olympic trademarks and charged consumers' credit cards, but never sent the tickets. The International Olympic Committee has asked the courts to impound the companies’ domain names. The tickets for the opening and closing ceremonies were embedded with a microchip that allows authorities to see the ticket holder’s name, photo, and passport number. Those tickets could only be transferred once and had to be transferred before July 15^th. Even so, tickets to the opening ceremonies are being sold for as much as $24,750 each to unsuspecting consumers.

The Beijing Organization Committee announced that all tickets for the Beijing events have been sold out. Tickets for venues outside of Beijing are still available but are disappearing fast.