The Beijing Olympics organizers Monday reminded ticket buyers of purchasing tickets through legal ways otherwise they may risk losing money.

In responding to how the Beijing Organizing Committee of the Olympic Games (BOCOG) would deal with fraud ticket websites outside China, media official Sun Weide said they need to check with the National Olympic Committees.

Reporters told Sun that citizens in some countries bought tickets from a website called Beijingticket2008.com and some lost thousand of dollars for buying tickets in this website.

"We are not fully aware of the situation. The BOCOG needs to check with those NOCs, but we are firmly against illegal transfer of tickets," said Sun.

"The international sale of the tickets will be carried out by the NOCs or agents authorized by the NOCs," he said. "The fraudulence is something we try to draw attention to the public and we urge them to do the resale through legal channels."

"For the victims, they have to take care of the consequences on their own if they got it through illegal ways," he said.

The BOCOG put on sale 6.80 million tickets, one quarter of which were distributed to over 170 national Olympic committees worldwide. For people outside China to buy the tickets, they need to apply to their respective National Olympic Committees or the authorized agents.

The rest of the tickets were sold inside China through the official ticketing website www.tickets.beijing2008.cn, calling ticketing hotline 8610-952008 or the Bank of China ticket outlets in the first three phases.

And the fourth and final phase of ticket sales started on July 25 as the last 820,000 tickets went on sale. All 250,000 tickets for events that would be held in the capital were sold out on July 31 and cracking down on scalpers was intensified.

"The scalping of tickets is prohibited by the national laws and BOCOG is very supportive of investigating into the scalping cases or other related illegal activities," Sun said.

A little under 90 people have been detained by Beijing Police for scalping Olympics tickets since May and in some case they may face up to 15 days in jail.

(Xinhua News Agency August 4, 2008)