Olympic officials said consumers were told all along to deal only with an authorized ticket seller, New Jersey-based CoSport. Demand proved so strong that CoSport used a lottery to award tickets and quickly sold out.
David Boctor, a Los Angeles Internet entrepreneur who paid beijingticketing.com $11,505 for tickets to the opening ceremony and such popular events as swimming and diving, said he started to grow suspicious after the company stopped answering his phone calls in April and his credit card was charged for airline tickets that he didn't buy.
Yet Boctor said Friday he continues to check his mailbox, holding out hope that tickets will arrive before he, his sister and his best friend board a Beijing-bound airliner on Wednesday.
"If I failed to recognize this Internet scam, very few other individuals with less of an e-commerce background would have had a chance," said Boctor, who runs an online retail store. "So I can empathize with others in the same position."
Houston travel agent Jolanta Sochacka said that she conducted her normal due diligence before spending $57,000 for tickets on behalf of a family of seven. "I've been in business for 18 years, I'm aware that there's fraud out there," Sochacka said. "But they looked so legitimate, their website was so elaborate."
When the company stopped answering its phones, Sochacka had a friend in Arizona visit the Phoenix office mentioned on beijingticketing.com's website.
The friend called back to say the office suite was empty, and there was no evidence that the company even existed. On Wednesday, Sochacka alerted her credit card company and began hustling to find replacement tickets.
Attempts by The Times to contact beijingticketing.com by phone and e-mail were unsuccessful.
Jonathan Murray, a British national who was in Laguna Beach this week for business, said he paid beijingticketing.com $4,950 for tickets to equestrian events in Hong Kong -- a surprise for his fiancee, a professional equestrian.
The couple plans to marry next week in Switzerland and honeymoon in Hong Kong.
The trip is still on, and Murray managed to replace most of the tickets. But he's embarrassed.
"I work for a fairly large software company, and the team I manage is responsible for dealing with Internet crime," Murray said. "So it was quite amusing to everyone at work that I had been scammed on the Internet.
"The important point I'm making by talking about this is that this was a bloody good scam."
