BEIJING, Dec. 14 (Xinhua) -- A man convicted of operating a phony official
Olympics website and cheating money was sentenced on Friday to six months in
prison in Beijing.
The Haidian District People's Court of Beijing Municipality passed the jail
sentence and a fine of 2,000 yuan (271 U.S. dollars) on Liao Peigui, for making
3,000 yuan (406 U.S. dollars) by goading two netizens 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).
Each netizen he cheated was asked to transfer the "award acceptance fee" of
1,500 yuan (203 U.S. dollars) to an account he opened in March to cash their
awards, including 28,000 (3,798 U.S. dollars) and two tickets for the 2008
Beijing Olympic Games.
Liao, who worked as a computer engineer in south China's Hainan Province,
was previously suspected of making 400,000 yuan (52,631.6 U.S. dollars) with the
help of the phony Olympics website when he was arrested in September.
But it finally turned out that only two victims were involved, according to
the court verdict.
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 page impressions every day this year, according to
BOCOG.