Guangzhou railway public security bureau announced Monday that three fake railway ticket production premises had been raided early Monday with almost 3,000 fake railway tickets seized and seven people detained.

If all the fake railway tickets had been sold, three trains would be needed to hold all the victims, the Yangcheng Evening News reported.

The fake tickets are made from used tickets or short-distance railway tickets which are then amended or altered to represent more expensive tickets and then sold to unsuspecting passengers.

Another method of exchanging fake tickets was to chat with passengers, ask to have a look at their tickets, then exchange the fake tickets for the real ones when the passenger is distracted. The genuine tickets are then either sold or returned for a refund.

Changsha branch of the Guangzhou railway public security bureau recently received information that two men from Zhuzhou in Hunan Province often bought used short-trip railway tickets for 1.5 yuan (US$ 0.18) per ticket and then sold them for three yuan to two men from Jiangxi Province.

Investigators suspected a fake railway ticket scam and investigation indicated that a gang had been purchasing large numbers of used railway tickets in Guangzhou and found that they were living in Sanyuanli.

Police raided the rented apartments in Sanyuanli at 1 a.m. Monday and caught two suspects in sleep, seizing 694 used railway tickets.

Within two hours, police had caught five more suspects and confiscated more than 2,000 fake railway tickets in another two rented apartments.

As travel fever rises, around 780,000 tickets were sold throughout the province on Sunday, the first day for Spring Festival ticket sales.

(Shenzheni Daily January 18, 2005)