Bogus websites purporting to sell tickets for the 2008 Summer Games in Beijing have scammed hundreds of ticket buyers out of Olympian-sized payments.
Canadians, Americans, Australians and some athletes' families, have been duped in the scam. Some have lost as much as US$50,000.
"It had the different characters that are on the Olympic website," Chante Pathak of Windsor, Ont., told CTV News. "It had every sporting event possible, every time, a timetable, a map -- everything. It looked totally legitimate."
The International Olympic Committee and U.S. authorities have sued two websites, beijingticketing.com and beijing-2008tickets.com, and shut at least one of them down, alleging they made millions.
Authorities say the websites were illegally using Olympic trademarks to convince customers to hand over their credit card and personal information.
Consumers who ordered tickets from www.beijingticketing.com, reported receiving a mass email Monday that informed them the company did not have tickets to distribute.
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