www.beijingticketing.com fraud Olympic Ticket

Judge shutters Web site offering Olympic tickets
A federal judge has temporarily shut down a Web site that Olympic officials say is defrauding patrons by falsely advertising tickets to the games in Beijing.

It's the second such Web site ordered closed in the last two weeks.

The judge ordered the shutdown Tuesday, pending a resolution of the U.S. Olympic Committee's lawsuit alleging the site is a scam.

USOC lawyers say http://www.beijingticketing.com cheated numerous U.S. residents out of thousands of dollars by falsely promising to deliver tickets to the games starting Friday.

The site was apparently disabled by its operators Monday, but the lawyers want the court order to keep it down permanently.



Online ticket fraud being fought at Beijing Olympics

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.