By DPA
Beijing : The police in southern China have arrested nine people suspected of running a fake Olympic website to cheat visitors, state media said Sunday.
The police from Nanjing city traced the gang on the island province of Hainan after more than 100 people reportedly paid a total of 300,000 yuan ($41,660) to enter a bogus scheme to win cash prizes and Olympic tickets, the reports said.
The gang set up a website in December with the official-sounding name www.2008cga.com and demanded deposits of at least 1,000 yuan (around $139) to enter the competition, the reports quoted Nanjing police as saying.
The two leaders of the gang were Internet gaming addicts, it said without elaborating.
Several other cases of fake Olympic websites and online ticketing scams were reported in China in recent months, including at least one imitator of the official Beijing ticketing website.
A Beijing-based computer engineer was sentenced to six months in prison in December for operating a fake Olympic website.