Boston-based software architect Joshua Sutherland, who paid beijingticketing.com $1,500, said the tight security, expensive software and high-end servers made the site seem legitimate.
"This wasn't cheap infrastructure and technology," Sutherland said. " . . . It's like one of those boiler room deals in the stock market. The huge office and all these people. And at the last second, they simply shut it down."
Most of the victims interviewed said they would still go to China, though they are leery about using scalpers there, given China's hard-line stance against the practice. Sutherland wondered if he'd "end up in a reeducation camp."
Said Thomas W. Dunbar, a Washington, D.C., businessman who ordered tickets from beijingticketing.com: "Now I'm resigned to the fact that I'm going to take a 12- to 13-hour plane trip, only to sit in my hotel room and watch the opening ceremony on television like tens of millions of other people around the world."
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greg.johnson@latimes.com
