Man sentenced for scalping over 3,700 train tickets

NANCHANG -- A man was sentenced Thursday to 11 months in prison and fined 1.24 million yuan ($178,000) for scalping over 3,749 train tickets in East China's Jiangxi province, according to local authorities.

Ticket scalpers, once the scourge of Spring Festival train travelers, have seen their profits derailed by online booking services, but some have been trying to bypass the booking system.

The man surnamed Liu, bought two ticket-snatching applications and over 935 real-name registered accounts on 12306.cn, China's official ticket booking platform, for hoarding and reselling tickets in 2017.

The software enabled him to increase his chances of landing a ticket by bypassing the image verification on the website and automatically allowing multiple accounts to login in and submitting orders, according to the Nanchang Railway Transport Intermediate Court.

Liu gained 50 yuan to 200 yuan from scalping a ticket. From April 2018 to February 2019, Liu bought over 1,327,538.5 yuan worth of tickets and gained 342,420 yuan from reselling them, the court said.

In May 2019, 12306.cn expanded a service to all passenger trains for automatically allocating canceled train tickets to other buyers who have paid in advance when tickets have sold out, which can help buyers obtain a canceled ticket faster than using ticket-snatching software.