A?man was caught yesterday for scalping train tickets in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, Shanghai Railway police said.

Police seized 115 train tickets worth more than 20,000 yuan (US$3,038) from the suspect surnamed Chang. Many of the tickets were for major cities, said Shanghai police, who work with their counterparts in other cities in the Yangtze River Delta region during the annual Spring Festival travel rush.

Chang, from Anhui Province, is also a drug addict and he wanted to use the money from ticket scalping to buy narcotics, police said.

Chang was caught after Shanghai officers found the same people queuing over and over to buy train tickets at Suzhou's railway station.

Police found they were giving the train tickets to one man. The suspect hired them, paying up to 100 yuan each, to buy train tickets, police said. Chang then sold the tickets to other scalpers at higher prices, officers added.