London Lines Up Against Olympic Ticket Fraudsters

(ATR) London 2012 organizers andScotland Yardsay they willaggressively combat ticket fraud at the Games.

With the 8.8 million tickets going on sale from March 15 until April 26, LOCOG chair Sebastian Coe says he is determined that the criminal fraternity not rip off fans.

"Our target is to have full stadia and accessible prices as the revenue raised from ticket sales is our last financial dependency. This will be the greatest show on earth and we want it not to degenerate into the greatest scam on Earth," Coe said Thursday during a media briefing on London's anti-fraud efforts.

"The Metropolitan Police is the most important stakeholder we have in this area. They are the experts. They have the track record.

"Our advice to the public is to think very carefully before going into the secondary market. It’s a very complex area, we make no bones about that, but we aim to make it as hard as possible to subvert it."

Three-quarters of the tickets will go directly to the public, with 12 percent sold internationally by the national Olympic committees, eight percent heading to sponsors and the remainder to the IOC, media, hospitality companies and the international sports federations.

LOCOG aims to make sure all links in the chain lead to true fans being there come July 2012.

"We need to get tickets into the hands of people who genuinely want them," LOCOG chief executive Paul Deighton told reporters.

"We want to get a cycling ticket into the hand of a genuine cycling fan, someone who will not want to lose it at any price."

LOCOG urges all interested parties to buy their tickets through the London 2012 website, through authorized travel agents and hospitality providers or through their national Olympic committees. NOCs are to only be given tickets for sports in which their athletes are traditionally successful and have placed a demand at past games.

Every ticket will be bar-coded, and LOCOG will unveil next month a "website checker" – a facility where users can type in the address of a site purporting to be an accredited ticket seller and learn whether that is actually the case. All searches made using the website checker will then be used to investigate potential fraudsters.

Unusual buying patterns will be tracked, and ticket holders will be advised only to re-sell through the official website, where there is a guarantee that they will be bought back at face value.

A network of Authorised Ticket Resellers (ATRs) will be monitored, and any "illicit activity" will result in LOCOG cutting them off from future ticket supplies.

In addition, LOCOG has bought "several hundred" domain names.

Leading "Operation Podium" –a team of 36 specialist detectives briefed to combat organized crime and protect the "Olympic economy" –is chief inspector Nick Downing, a 22-year Met veteran who readily admits to never having been involved in anything quite as complex.

"We have studied the hospitality sector’s experiences and risks at major events, and we’ve looked at what happens regularly around the country on a Saturday (at major football matches) or at the O2for a big concert," said Downing.

"From that learning we have developed a strategy that we think will protect the 2012 ticketing regime."

Downing’s team ran operations this year on nine separate occasions and made 32 arrests, mainly on U.K. citizens.

LOCOG and the Met are banking on the 40-day ticket application window – which is not first-come, first-served but instead employs a lottery system when demand exceeds supply–and the centralization of the procedure from the London 2012 website to decrease the risk of tickets getting into the wrong hands.

It is a criminal offense to sell a ticket for the Games before March 15.

"We are not going to stop [ticket fraud] but will make it as hard as possible for the criminals to operate," adds Downing.

"No one has ever looked as hard at this problem as we are. We have a team of 36 and extra resources to call on."

Written and reported by Adrian Hill in London .