Scammers Run Olympic Rings Round Beijing Fans

The Age

Tuesday August 5, 2008

By Daniella Miletic, Consumer Affairs Reporter

JACQUI Harris and Cassie Sellman felt uneasy about buying tickets to the Beijing Olympics over the internet.

So in March when they decided to nab a seat for the cycling events that Ms Harris' boyfriend, Mark French, was scheduled to compete in, they picked two professional-looking websites - beijingticketing.com and chinaolympic2008tickets.com. They figured that if one turned out to be unreliable, they would at least have some tickets from the other website.

But with only a few sleeps before they leave for China, they are down $1000 each and have not received any tickets.

One website they used, beijingticketing.com, has become the subject of a global fraud investigation, while the women have their doubts about the second site.

Although beijingticketing.com was publicly outed as a scam five months ago in the US and Britain, the news failed to reach consumer protection agencies in Australia.

Beijing Olympic spokesman Sun Weide said the international tickets were sold officially only through national Olympic committees. The Australian Olympic Committee's official agent was a company called CoSport.

The Commonwealth Bank, ANZ Bank and American Express Australia all said yesterday that affected customers would receive a refund.

Visa International has exclusive ticketing rights for the Games, but the scam sites accept a variety of credit cards. A Visa spokesman, Andrew Woodward, said cardholders would be able to recoup any money lost, but it was the banks that were to blame for allowing merchants behind the sites onto the Visa network.

Ms Harris and Ms Sellman will share the limited number of tickets allocated for friends and family of athletes with French's father and brother.

Ms Harris said she was surprised the scam was not detected sooner.

With what appears to be the Beijing Olympics logo, the US-based site beijingticketing.com looks convincing. But a closer look shows the logo is missing the official Olympics rings and the site is riddled with grammatical errors.

In Australia, distraught sports fans - mostly Victorians - reported losses totalling $96,900 to a national hotline.

According to the Office of Fair Trading, 33 Australian victims called the hotline yesterday, 15 from Victoria.

The International Olympic Committee has also received hundreds of complaints overseas and in Australia.

Meanwhile, Ms Harris feels disappointed that so many people have been fooled.

She and Ms Sellman are trying not to let the scam ruin their trip. "We are laughing about it now. If we don't laugh, we will cry," Ms Sellman laughs.

The hotline number is 1800 055 555.

© 2008 The Age

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