A man in south China's island province of Hainan has been arrested for fraud for operating a phony official Olympics website, said local police on Sunday.

Twenty-year-old Liao Peigui, who works as a computer engineer in central Hainan's Danzhou City, is suspected of making 400,000 yuan (US$52,631.6) by goading people into entering fake prize draws on a website he "cloned" from the official one of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the 2008 Olympic Games (BOCOG).

Netizens he cheated were asked to transfer certain amount of money, usually 10 to 20 percent of the "prize" value, to an account he opened in March this year. Some people lost 10,000 yuan, said Wu Yingkang, an official with the provincial public security department of Hainan.

The man has confessed to local police.

China launched a six-month campaign last April targeting online pornography, illegal lotteries, contraband trade and fraud.

The official Olympics website, www.beijing2008.cn, attracts an average 1.1 million visits every day this year, according to Jiang Xiaoyu, executive vice-president of BOCOG.

(Xinhua News Agency October 1, 2007)