"Humanizing the Beijing ticket scam" 1000s of $$ and chance to watch loved ones at Olympics lost

First, the story...



Now some ugly comments...




Regardless of how I feel about the human rights issues (some other commenters felt strongly about that situation as well) I feel very badly for the families who were both ripped off and stripped of their chance to see their loved ones compete in a once in a lifetime event. How heartbreaking for them all!

The USofA refused (both sites were hosted in America, the contact address an empty office in Phoenix).

A logical conclusion is that it was a Carlyle Group presentation.

Admittedly though, 50M U$ is such small change, that I doubt Carlyle would have bothered.Probably some other bushista then, as it is certainly not clear to the Australians why the sites were allowed to continue to operate.

I did not get caught in it, but I did go to look at the website last week when the Ozzies were really up in arms about it. Except for the logo being not quite right, and the many typos (which had an Asian flavor), the site would have passed my eye-ball test for being legitimate - and I would not have caught the logo problem.

BBB had no listing of the companies, or of the sites.

The lesson here, is that not all the crooks are in congress. It makes me reconfirm my resolve that if I can find no listing for a site at the BBB, I will not buy anything from it.

True, this is a "once-in-a-lifetime" sort of deal, which possibly would not be in existence long enough to be recognized by the BBB. Even so, if there is no BBB listing don't buy there. Even if the BBB listing is less than stellar (as many sites I buy from - yes, am a geek - are) at least you know that there is actually a company there!

I won't buy from sites with misspellings and errors in grammar. If it reads like some kid in his parent's basement made it, then it probably was. (I learned this the hard way when I signed up for some web-hosting from a reseller. Not only was the "tech support" nonexistent, but when my domain name expired he snatched it up. I wasn't willing to pay an arm and a leg for it so I lost it. x( )

Same thing happened at the FIFA world cup in Germany. Additionally since at the football WC tickets are allocated to national associations, a lot of men make a lot of money holding them and then selling for exorbitant prices.

Global sporting events sports are among the biggest rackets on the planet.