USOC officials on Sunday used Internet blogs and chat rooms to advise consumers who'd done business with beijingticketing.com and another website that failed to deliver tickets to check with an authorized Beijing Games ticket seller in the U.S. that had received "an additional small allocation of tickets."
The USOC advised consumers to check with New Jersey-based CoSport, which operates online as www.cosport.com. The USOC, however, cautioned consumers that no additional opening or closing ceremony tickets are available. Attorneys representing the Olympics last week won a court order that shut down another website ( www.beijing-tickets.com) that allegedly was run by the same company behind beijingticketing.com.
Although web chat rooms and blogs are filled with speculation over who is operating the websites, Olympics officials have yet to say whom they believe to be behind the websites.
Jim Moriarty, a Houston trial lawyer who spent $12,000 on Olympic tickets wonders why it took so long for Olympic officials to intervene.
"If I try to sell T-shirts with the Olympic rings on them, the USOC would have the police knocking on my door at 3 a.m. with a cease and desist order," Moriarty said.
"The IOC and USOC sued because they want to protect their logos, to collect damages for themselves," Moriarty said. "They want money from these websites, but not because they want to help us. Nobody is doing anything for the victims."
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greg.johnson@latimes.com
